Wing Three

And thank you, RedShirtNo5.1 - you're my first poster! May you manage to make it back from all of your away missions!

Johnathan

ADVENTURE 19 - FIELDS OF RUIN

PC Roster:
Fields of Ruin was another Wizards of the Coast adventure (from the "Fantastic Locations" line) I had purchased for the foldout battle maps. Written by Richard Pett, it has had more of an impact on my overall campaign than most single adventures, for two reasons: one of the four battle maps is a simple stretch of road leading through a forest, and I can't recall how many times over the years I've reused that map (if an adventure calls for a random encounter while on the road, I usually pull out this map to stage the battle; likewise, I've written two short adventures to specifically use this map); in addition, one of the NPCs has become a recurring character and thorn-in-my-PCs'-sides over the course of many adventures to follow.

The NPC in question got a bit of a sex change in my version of the adventure for a simple reason: he was a tiefling, and while I couldn't find a picture of a male tiefling on the computer that I particularly liked, there were plenty of female tieflings. So, just like that, "Kazmir the Magpie" became "Kazmira the Magpie."

The adventure is another quest, this time for a minor artifact called the Earthcrown, so I made it another Adventurers Guild mission that had been handed to Wing Three: go to these ruins, find the Earthcrown, and return it to the Guild.

My biggest disappointment was that there really isn't a satisfactory stand-in for a chimera miniature; I was forced to use a plastic lion, which fairly accurately depicted its size, but it wasn't very satisfying. Fortunately, by this time Jacob was using his allowance money to buy D&D Miniatures of his own, and went running to his bedroom to return with a Large brass dragon, which was a step in the right direction - it had dragon wings, at least.

But by far the most long-lasting impact of this adventure was Kazmira. Naturally, she tried to play herself off as an innocent adventurer willing to team up with the party; just as naturally, the always-suspicious Dan wasn't going to have his PC trust her any farther than he could throw her. And sure enough, when she tried to make off with the Earthcrown, Rale was ready for her. Kazmira didn't stand much of a chance, really, and before she knew it she had been stripped bare (Rale wasn't taking any chances that this rogue might have some lockpicks tucked away in her clothing, or at least that's the excuse that Dan provided to the rest of the party), and then securely bound in a tightly-trussed configuration, rather like a roast pig on a platter. After that, there was some discussion on just how they were going to transport her all the way back to Greyhawk City. (Rale, a rogue himself, recalled that there was a price on her head back in Greyhawk City for various high-profile burglaries.) Akari volunteered to place his Guild ring on her, write a quick note for Gareth and tuck it between her fingers, and then activate the ring to "bink" her back to Guild Headquarters, still securely bound. After all, the PCs had their horses and Old Clem with them, so they'd have to head on home the old-fashioned way. This was quickly agreed upon, and the plan was put into effect - and not too soon, either, as suddenly a dark shadow fell upon the PCs and a crystal fell from the sky at their feet. Looking up, they saw a multihued castle floating on a cloud, hanging motionless in the sky directly above them. It looked like their next adventure had just shown up on the tail end of their previous adventure!

ADVENTURE 20 - PRISM KEEP

PC Roster:
"Prism Keep" was another Dungeon adventure - this one from issue #45, and written by Rich Baker (the author who later wrote "Rana Mor" - so it's no wonder I enjoyed both adventures!) - that was on my "I have to run this adventure some day" list. It involved an archmage's cloud-borne castle and the creatures that had overtaken it during the archmage's incapacitation.

I fell in love with this adventure the first time I saw the map of the castle. It had seven giant prisms jutting up out of it, each one a different color. When I made the geomorphs for this adventure, I used white posterboard for the "normal" rooms but used colored construction paper for each of the spires, and I was very pleased with the results. This was written back in the AD&D days, so I made a few slight changes to the monster palette, but nothing serious - I tried to replicate the monsters called for in the adventure with 3E versions, even if I had to create them myself. (For instance, there's a "hordeling" that shows up late in the adventure - I just had to wing the stats myself, as there were no 3E hordeling stats available. I could have just replaced the hordeling with a different fiend, but I wanted to keep it as "pure" as possible.)

Anyway, the adventure served as a bit of an "interruption" from the PCs' original plans, which was to hightail it back to Greyhawk City as fast as possible to go turn in Kazmira for the reward. They had "binked" her back to Headquarters using Akari's ring, figuring Gareth could keep her imprisoned until their return (they had even affixed a note to that effect upon her person before "binking" her home). But now they had this looming castle floating directly overhead, and it was making the nearby townspeople a bit nervous.

The crystal that had dropped practically at the PCs' feet turned out to be a way of controlling the castle, as well as granting access to it. They got Old Clem and the horses securely tucked away at a nearby inn with an attached stable, plunked down enough coinage to pay for a few days (they weren't sure how long it would take them to deal with the castle's inhabitants), and were off.

However, this time they had an additional, if temporary, member of their adventuring party. We ran this adventure over a Christmas break, so not only was Logan back from college (and eager to grab the reins back from Dan and Jacob and run Akari through an adventure), but my older son Stuart was as well. Stuart and Logan had been through two previous campaigns with me thus far (one was AD&D 2nd Edition, the other started out 3.0 and switched to 3.5 and is still technically crawling along at a snail's pace at the rate of about one adventure every year), but this was the first time that Stuart was available to play in this campaign. He rolled up a human cleric of Pelor named Mercutio Midas for the event, and it just so happened that Mercutio was staying at the inn that Old Clem had just been tucked into for safety while the rest of the party checked out the floating castle. Stuart even wrote up an introduction for his character: those of you who have seen the movie version of "V for Vendetta" will recall V's introductory speech to Evey Hammond where just about every other word begins with the letter "V"; Stuart did up something similar, where just about every other word started with "M."

Going through the adventure as written went perfectly fine; once again, Rich Baker had done a great job in ensuring a wide variety of monsters. Jacob even happened to have a Brass Golem D&D Miniature (obviously patterned after the mechanical minotaur from one of the old Sinbad movies - "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger," I believe) that made a perfect stand-in for one of the creatures encountered in the castle's library. However, we did run into a couple of problems in integrating Stuart into our campaign.

When Stuart had gone away to college, he bought up a full set of 3.0 books (he already had the Player's Handbook) because he fully intended to keep playing D&D while he was away from home, even if it meant DMing himself. Unfortunately, Stuart's DMing style varied greatly from my own (as reported by none other than Logan, who had run PCs in campaigns run by both of us - it helped that both boys were going to the same college). Stuart's DMing style was very much in the "I'm the DM and what I say goes" camp, and he was apparently trying to bring some of his own DMing preferences into our game. For example, there was one point in the adventure when a female human wizard - an apprentice to the fallen archmage - and her summoned demons were at a standoff with the PCs. She wanted them to surrender peacefully, and they'd be allowed to go free; the PCs were having none of that nonsense, and although it hadn't devolved into violence yet, it was certainly imminent. Stuart took it upon himself to have Mercutio save the day, by approaching the wizard as if to discuss the situation calmly, at which point he expected to be able to whip out his dagger and slit her throat, instantly killing her with one action. In real life, he argued, having your throat slit meant instant death, and he was irritated that I wouldn't allow it in my game. (Oddly enough, I had run into the exact same argument with my brothers decades earlier when running a Gamma World campaign, when they were fighting each other and one brother was ticked that he couldn't just slit the other character's throat in one move and be done with it, regardless of the abstraction of hit point totals and the fact that the combat resolution mechanism in the game didn't support that.)

So Mercutio wasn't allowed to bend the rules completely to his favor and "win" D&D, and Stuart was a little sulky after that. He also played Mercutio "in character" all the time, roleplaying him to the hilt, which was perfectly fine with me although that wasn't the way the rest of the group ran their characters. The problem arose when Mercutio, after the party had taken down a group of enemies, yelled out (in character) "You just don't F@#$ with us!" - completely disregarding the fact that Joey, all of 4 or 5 at the time, was right there in the room. (Stuart and I don't see eye to eye about the topic of public swearing and probably never will. He's firmly in the "They're just words!" camp, whereas I, having raised not only two boys of my own but now raising my wife's nephew, try to have a bit more "situational awareness" about who's around me and what I can say.) Vicki smoothed it over with a quick, "Whoops!" for Joey's benefit, and Stuart had the good grace to apologize, but I don't think he was particularly happy with the artificial constraints I had on this current campaign, which after all was started for the express purpose of introducing an 8-year-old boy to D&D, and later encompassed his entire family (and half of mine). Stuart had run an all-evil campaign in college (plus several others: one was based on Roman undead hunters, another was D&D but involved alien abductions, and so on) and I think he found our games a bit too tame for his tastes.

Getting back to the adventure, the Archmage's apprentice, Irinia, had been given her own initiative card (a close-up of the image of a woman in a wizard's costume I had found online), because she had teleport on her list of spells and I had written it into my notes that she would teleport out if combat got to be too tough for her, thinking that she would make an excellent recurring foe. After all, if the PCs managed to foil her plans here, she'd want revenge on them, right? No such luck - by the time she had decided "That's it for me, next round I'm escaping!" she had been cut down by five PCs before her turn ever came around again. Which just goes to reinforce a lesson every DM must relearn from time to time: recurring enemies generally aren't chosen in advance; rather, they're the lucky ones who have an opportunity to escape immediately and take it.

In any case, by the end of the adventure the PCs had successfully cleaned out the flying castle and revived the Archmage, Alarius. One of his (still-loyal) assistants informed the PCs that his master needed a restful night's sleep after his recent ordeals, but would reward them in the morning, if they'd like to spend the night in Prism Keep. And then, just because I hated the idea of wasting an opportunity of being in a cloud castle (which, by the way, had started floating away guided only by the wind during the adventure after the PCs lost access to the control prism), I had the floating castle crash into a cloud island and founder. The next adventure would involve exploring the cloud island that they had inadvertantly run into. (However, both Stuart and Logan would be back in college by the time we got to play our next session, so we had Mercutio go his own merry way and put Akari back into "PC run by another player" status.)

ADVENTURE 21 - CANNIBAL IN THE CLOUDS

PC Roster:
I wanted to come up with an adventure that could take place on a cloud island (because when would be the next time the PCs would have ready access to a cloud island?), but flipping through my back issues of Dungeon magazine, nothing caught my eye. So I ended up designing two very short adventures - "Side Treks," really, in the Dungeon terminology.

First of all, I decided that the cloud island would be pretty big, large enough that it could support two separate encounters that had nothing to do with each other. The PCs, having crashed onto the island with Prism Keep, would need to go take a look at what they had run "aground" on, so I wouldn't need a whole lot in the way of plot hooks other than "go see what's out there."

For the first encounter, I made a simple cave structure, carved into the side of the cloud as it rose up like a cliff. And since this is a relatively short encounter, I think I might actually try to do this writeup in a more traditional Story Hour fashion. Let's see how that goes, shall we?

- - -

The four adventurers exited Prism Keep by its front entrance and headed around back. The Keep was still supported by its own cloud island, but that cloud island had run aground on a much larger one, and they needed to determine whether this was something they could try to fix on their own, or if they should allow the Archmage Alarius to deal with it once he had awakened from his near comalike slumber.

"Just what do you think we'll be able to do?" asked Rale. "This isn't like pushing a canoe back off of a sandbar."

"It's still worth checking out," replied Akari. "If nothing else, we should do some scouting of this larger island. It could be inhabited, and we might want to know ahead of time if there are enemies about."

"Well, sneaking up on them should be no problem," pointed out Delphyne, looking down at the puffy cloud she was standing on. Her sleight weight sunk her down to her ankles in the cottony white cloudstuff, but it fully supported her and walking along it caused absolutely no noise at all - there were no sticks to step on, no squelching mud, no accidentally kicked pebbles to give away their position as they traveled. In fact, the only sounds they could hear were those they made themselves - not only by talking, but the faint clinking of their armor. Akari was the worst on that front, with his half-plate armor. Slayer's thick hide armor was much quieter, plus he was well trained in the art of moving stealthily from his days back in the tribe. Rale was enjoying the magic leather armor he had taken from Kazmira (and thankful that it, like most magic armor, reconfigured to fit the body style of the wearer; magical properties or not, he would not be wearing any armor that could be measured in "cup size"). And Delphyne, as an arcane spellcaster, wore no armor at all but trusted in the magical properties of her bracers for protection; otherwise, her clothing was designed primarily for comfort, not its ability to deflect weapon strikes.

As they walked along the larger cloud, they noticed little puffs of cloudstuff being kicked up by their feet. These wisps would float up a few inches before slowly falling back down and being reabsorbed into the larger cloud mass.

The island itself was roughly oval in shape, with a large "hill" of sorts (possibly a small mountain? - it was difficult to judge scale and distance up here) rising up in the middle. The group discovered that climbing uphill was no more treacherous on a puffy cloud than it was on solid ground.

Eventually, their explorations took them to a cave, its entrance carved into the side of the rising hill, which at this part rose nearly vertically like a cliff. The entrance was about ten feet wide, and no illumination came from within - although the interior walls of the cave seemed to be made of cloudstuff as well.

The group took time to ready both illumination and weapons. Akari activated a sunrod and held it in his left hand, his longsword Hoardmaster in his right, and led the way. Slayer, whose half-orc heritage provided him the ability to see perfectly fine without artificial illumination, followed, his greatsword at the ready. Next came Delphyne, with Rale once again proffering to heroically "protect the rear flank" on his own.

After a short span, the passageway doubled in width, although wispy cloudstuff rose up about a third of the way to the ceiling from the floor along one wall. Examining this area, Delphyne noticed that it was much fluffier than the "normal" cloudstuff that made up the majority of the island, to include the walls and floor of this "cloud-cave," and surmised that it served as a bed - and a very comfortable one at that. Rale insisted on giving it a try (his offers for Delphyne to join him being firmly rebuffed), and, scrounging around, discovered a gem buried at the bottom of this extra-fluffy bed. "Let's hold up here awhile," he said to the others. "I want to see if there's any more treasure in here."

Sure enough, there was. A mad scramble for the giant-sized cloud bed ensued, with everyone digging around into the semisolid mist to feel for a hidden coin or gem along the floor. Akari glanced nervously down the unexplored corridor, but decided if he stood guard the others could do their scrounging safely enough. While waiting for them to finish up, he noticed that there were several weapons embedded into the opposite wall of this area. They looked as if they had been simply pushed into the cloudstuff of the wall until they "stuck," and were on semi-display there - possibly until needed by whoever lived here? The fact that somebody apparently lived here - or at least did, at some point in the past - got his conscience nagging him; maybe they'd best not be rooting around for buried treasure if it turned out they were raiding somebody's bedroom in doing so?

With the proper persuasion - and after Rale promised to keep all of the amassed coins and gems they had found buried in the "fluffy bed" in the same sack so they could turn it all over to any rightful owner who might eventually be found - Akari led the group deeper into the cave. Neither of them noticed a small scale on the floor at their feet. It was easy to miss, being a silvery white that blended in almost seamlessly with the ambient cloudstuff of the island. But the group pressed on, following the winding passageway as it delved deeper into the cloud.

The next area of note was well-lit, owing to a hole in the "roof" above that allowed sunlight to stream in. It illuminated a homemade desk of sorts, being composed of a wooden door (minus the doorknob) straddling a pair of empty crates tipped on their sides. A short barrel apparently served as a chair; testing it out showed that whoever used this area was about human sized. The desk held three items of interest: a stoppered jar of black ink, a feather quill, and a closed book. The book had no writing on its cover or any indication of its contents. Delphyne, hoping it might be a spellbook, volunteered to open it.

The first page was simply labeled: "Cannibal's Journal."

"Not good," commented Delphyne.

"Evil guy lives here," pointed out Rale, ever the pragmatist. "That means we're keeping the loot we found."

Delphyne flipped through the journal, noting that it was written in a shaky hand in the Common language of the region. She read the last page aloud.

most about her are her eyes – a deep, emerald green that seemed to pierce into my very soul, as if they could actually see the stain spreading there. I kept her for all of three days before I couldn’t take the cries and the pleading any more.

The next was a youth of some 15 or 16 summers. I took him from a shepherd’s field, where he had been tending a flock. I suppose I could just as easily have taken one or more of his sheep, but by then the compulsion was strong within me. Once I had tasted human flesh, the lesser meats had lost their flavor.

At times, between the cravings, I burn with shame at my actions. But when the hunger is upon me, there’s little I can do to resist it. Fasting doesn’t help. Praying doesn’t help, either – I fear I’ve fallen too far for the gods to ever want to redeem me. The good gods, at least – no doubt the gods of evil look upon my actions with much mirth and glee.

I often wonder what will become of me when I die. Is it truly a sin to eat human flesh, not being human myself? Some claim that the eating of any intelligent creature is sinful, that a dwarf eating the flesh of an elf is no better than that same dwarf dining upon dwarven flesh. But I wonder. Many believe that cannibalism is a sure way to rise as a ghoul upon death – can this be my fate? I have eaten the flesh of sentient beings, to be sure – yes, and reveled in its taste – but never have I dined upon the meat of my own species. Surely that must be taken into account. It’s my only hope.

Sometimes, in the black of the night when I am at my lowest, I shudder to think what I have become, and wish only for death, that I may put an end to this horrid business. But I fear rising as a ghoul. As an undead monstrosity, I would be little more than a mindless eating machine, reveling in the consumption of any creature I encountered. But would that be much different than what I’ve become? At least now, while I live, I can hold out for a short time between cravings. Perhaps that will be worth some small consideration when I am judged in the afterlife? I can only hope so.

* * *

I caught another human again today, and spirited him away to the cave of chains. I kid myself by thinking that maybe I’ll let him go, that I’ll change my mind, but I know that eventually, the hunger will win out, as it always does. This one has darker skin than the others I’ve taken. I can’t help wondering if his flesh will taste any different.

* * *

I am a loathsome abomination. This time, I started devouring the man before he was even fully dead.

I cannot say for sure whether the taste was actually enhanced by his pitiful screams, or if it just seemed so due to my depravity. I truly deserve no less than ghouldom.

It may even be worth it, too. I’ll get to feast on all the human flesh I want, without the crushing depression and self-loathing between my abhorrent meals.

In the meantime, I’ll seek out another victim soon. I hate what I’ve become, but I cannot stop myself.

Click to expand...

"Let's get out of here before this guy returns," suggested Rale.

"We need to check out the rest of the area," pointed out Akari. "There might be a victim trapped here, ready to become the cannibal's next meal." There was no arguing against that; the team moved deeper down the tunnel. After another twist to the right, the passageway dead-ended into a small room. There, hanging from the ceiling, were numerous barbed chains, and an elderly man lay unmoving and unconscious about a foot above the floor, his flesh impaled upon several savage hooks. The floor and walls, made of the same cloud-stuff as the rest of the cave, showed red and brown bloodstains indicating past and more recent use.

"The cave of chains," whispered Delphyne, eyes grown wide with horror.

"Help me get him down," commanded Akari, passing his sunrod to Rale as he and Slayer sheathed their swords.

"Wait a minute," argued Rale. "How do we know we can trust him?" This brought a lot of astonished gasps and an "Are you kidding?" look from Delphyne. Akari and Slayer grabbed the man by the legs and lifted him, pulling him off of the wicked barbs of the chains, which jingled and clattered at their ministrations. The man groaned, his eyes flickered, and he blinked into staggered semiconsciousness. Slayer lowered him slowly to the floor and Akari laid hands on the old man, healing the worst of his wounds.

"Who are you?" demanded Rale, eager to start the interrogations.

"...water," whispered the old man through parched lips. Akari fumbled at his belt and pulled out a healing potion, propping the man up and helping him to drink it down. He coughed, and closed his eyes as if to sleep.

"We need to get you out of here," suggested Akari. "Can you tell me how you were taken here? And who took you? What are we dealing with?" The victim just looked confused and mumbled incoherently. Akari and Slayer lifted him up and each took one of his arms, determined to drag him out of there if necessary. "Rale, take the lead. We're leaving," he said.

They made it as far as the writing desk before the old man raised his head and struggled to stand on his own two feet. "I think I can make it," he said weakly. "Thank you. Ay. I'm Ayyy...?" He seemed surprised at his inability to recall his own name. As they passed the makeshift table, he stared at the Cannibal's Journal as if it meant something, but to the others it looked as if the memories would not come. They prompted him to keep moving, and headed back the way they had come.

They were almost to the "fluffy cloud" bed when the old man stopped in his tracks and stared straight at the floor, transfixed by something the others didn't see. Finally, Slayer bent over and picked up a small, silvery-white scale, no longer than his little finger and about half that in width. The old man continued to stare at it, mesmerized, then started giggling. He took the scale from Slayer's hand and held it, turning it back and forth between his fingers. “I don’t need to fear the cannibal...and neither do any of you!” he laughed. “I can protect us all!” With that, his features began shifting. He dropped to all fours and began expanding in size, eventually taking the shape of a silver-scaled dragon some 12 feet from nose to tail. Still laughing, he continued, “My memories are returning! My name is Aelon, and I... I...."

His laughter abruptly ceased, and a look of horror appeared on his reptilian face. “Run,” he whispered. “I’m the cannibal! Run for your lives!”

That's the sort of command you generally don't need to hear twice. Rale turned and sped down the passageway, throwing an "I told you so!" over his shoulder as he ran. Slayer and Akari gripped their swords, ready for combat; they were closer to the exit than Aelon, but Delphyne was trapped behind him. It looked like there would be no running from this threat, but rather that combat would ensue. Personally, both warriors were pleased - better to face the threat and overcome it here in tight quarters than to give it the freedom of the open skies.

Half-orc and elf thrust at the dragon with their swords; Delphyne fired off a cluster of magic missiles. The dragon wasn't particularly large - at least, not compared to how big these things could get - but it was big enough to do some heavy damage with its claws, teeth, and even by swatting with its wings. It spewed forth a cloud of billowing gas not much different in color than the cloudstuff all around them, and Delphyne felt her muscles locking up. As she plummeted face-first into the ground, she had a moment to think, quite coherently given the circumstances, that given a choice of materials to fall face-first into, cloudstuff was certain to be near the very top of her list.

Akari realized that they needed some protection, especially with their only full-time spellcaster down. "I'm sorry," he apologized in advance, and summoned his war horse, Tenuma, from the celestial realms where he lived when not summoned by his master. The three adventurers (for Rale eventually returned to do what he could once he saw that Plan A: Run for the Exit had been suddenly converted to Plan B: Fight the Guy Who I Said All Along Shouldn't Be Trusted, Only Now in his Hungry Dragon Form) dodged and weaved around the war horse, using him as a shield from the dragon's vicious bites and ducking beneath him to stab at Aelon with their weapons. Tenuma kicked at the draconic monster as well as he could, and eventually, the three adventurers and a war horse were triumphant, and the silver dragon fell dead into a puff of displaced cloudstuff, which settled down over it again like a shroud.

Akari thanked his trusted steed and used up the rest of his healing touch to soothe the worst of its wounds before releasing it back to its celestial realms. About that time, Delphyne was regaining her mobility, and the four staggered from the cave and back into the sunlight.

But not before Rale retrieved the sack of loot they had gathered from Aelon's cloud-bed.

- - -

I find it kind of ironic that the shortest adventure we had ever had up to this point has taken me the longest to document. While this was a quick little encounter, it did absolutely nothing to sway Dan from the opinion that all NPCs were to be distrusted as a matter of course.

ADVENTURE 22 - THE SOUNDGARDEN

PC Roster:
This is the second short adventure ("Side Trek," really) that I created to take advantage of the party being temporarily stranded on a cloud island. As such, it took place immediately after the events of "Cannibal in the Clouds," and together the two mini-adventures completed one short gaming session.

- - -

Exiting the cloud cave of the cannibalistic silver dragon Aelon, the four adventurers saw an unexpected sight: a giant bee, flying straight toward them. They readied weapons, but the bee slowed to a stop and hovered directly in front of them. Then, amazingly, it spoke.

“Zuzzazozz,” it droned. “Zuzzazozz I be. You be?”

After introductions were made (and weapons lowered, if not stashed), Zuzzazozz continued. "Mizztrezz raizzed me, bade me tend the oazzizz. Then zznake-bird-women came. Now Mizztrezz no longer comezz. Alive izz alive, and dead izz dead. Not-dead izz not-dead. Mizztrezz is not-dead. You make Mizztrezz dead, yezz?”

After some further questions, it appeared that Zuzzazozz had been awakened by a cloud giantess who had created an oasis at the very top of the cloud island, and charged her giant bee companion to tend to the gardens contained therein. Then, the "snake-bird-women" - which Akari believed were probably lillends, for they at least fit the physical description - slew the giantess and apparently raised her as an undead creature. Zuzzazozz, believing undead to be abominations to the natural order of things (the bee had attained several druid levels over its lifetime), wanted the party to slay the animated remains of its former mistress.

That much understood, the group agreed to follow the giant bee to the top of the cloud-mountain, and it took them around back where there was a less steep slope more suitable for those unable to fly. As they approached the top, they began to hear what sounded like wind chimes coming from ahead, and the harmonious tones of a harp being played by a master of the craft.

"Great, I'm standing on a cloud and listening to harp music," muttered Rale. "I didn't die when I wasn't looking, did I?"

But sure enough, the sounds they had heard were exactly what they had appeared to be. As the group crested the top of the cloud, an enormous, open-air pavilion stood before them, its marble roof supported by pillars at least 20 feet high. A large number of wind chimes hung from the ceiling, adding their music to that of the harp being played by a white-haired giantess with pale blue skin seated on a marble bench at the rear of the pavilion. She seemed oblivious to the party's presence.

Not so oblivious were the two beings flanking her. Each had the upper torso of a beautiful human woman, with a serpentine lower body and brightly-plumed wings sprouting from her shoulders. “Greetings,” said the one on the left. I am Harmonia...”

“...And I am Melodia,” finished the one on the left. “Welcome to the Soundgarden. You can be of great service to us.”

With that, they focused their conversation back to themselves. “The mongrel orc is a walking arsenal,” said Harmonia casually. “His weapons would make a welcome addition to our chimes.”

“As would the armor of the paladin,” replied Melodia. “As for the human cow and the leather-clad bull skulking in the back, they look to have little beyond their own bones to contribute. But we will make do with what they provide....”

A quick confirmation of his ability to detect evil told Akari that both lillends and the cloud giantess were as evil as he had expected. He sprang forward, ready to strike with Hoardmaster. Slayer, likewise, gripped his greatsword and allowed the rage he felt to fuel his strikes. The lillends, for their part, spent their first moments of combat in summoning reinforcements: Harmonia summoned four air mephits to attack the newcomers, while Melodia commanded the giantess to attack. She rose up from the oversized marble bench and picked up an equally oversized morningstar. Amazingly, the harp played on without her. The winds from the mephits stirred the wind chimes of the Soundgarden into overdrive, the cacophanous clattering of what the group saw now to be composed of human bones, bits of armor, and various weapons, all hanging in a specific pattern from the ceiling of the pavilion, making it difficult to concentrate on casting spells.

Despite the audio assault, Delphyne's magic missiles made quick work of one of the mephits. Akari and Slayer ganged up on the cloud giantess and hit her repeatedly, but they didn't seem to do as much damage as it seemed they should have - in fact, despite staggering her back with the force of their combined blows, her skin seemed unblemished, uncut, and unbloodied. Rale took a moment of concentration and seemed to see through the cloud giantess to the bones beneath. "She's just a skeleton!" he yelled out to the others, before moving in to attack one of the lillends.

That explained why their swords weren't having that much of an effect, but it came too late to be of any use to Akari, who took a vicious swipe to the side of the head from the massive morningstar and crumpled to the ground in a heap, dead. Slayer dropped his greatsword and pulled a mace from the arsenal at his belt and had a much easier time taking down the skeleton. Then he moved on to the second lillend and gave her the full force of his barbaric fury. She staggered under his blows, while the other one was fending off both Rale's sword and Delphyne's spells. The three remaining mephits were little more than nuisances to the three adventurers, who ignored them in the face of the greater threat the lillends represented.

And eventually, the lillends fell to the combined might of weapon and spells. The mephits, no longer being commanded by their slain mistresses, fled the scene, and the clatter of the gruesome wind chimes slowed down now that they weren't being constantly swirled around by gusts of wind. Soon enough, all that could be heard was the magical harp, which had continued to play during the combat. And to that was soon mingled the sounds of a giant bee's wings, as Zuzzazozz approached. "Mizztrezz izz dead," he asserted. "Thizz izz good. Dead izz better than not-dead." (By this time, the group had come to understand that "not-dead" was the bee's term for "undead.")

Zuzzazozz offerred to restore Akari to life, an offer which was greatfully accepted by the group. In a strange and intricate ritual that involved spellcasting with both front legs and antennae, and which involved pouring bee nectar down the dead elf's throat, Akari was raised from the dead, the horrid wounds on his face closing up and leaving only a copious amount of drying blood on the side of his head as evidence that anything had ever happened to him. Despite their offers to help Zuzzazozz raise the cloud giantess if they could, the giant bee turned them down. She had been dead for too long, and all that was left of her body was her skeleton; there was little that Zuzzazozz could do, other than remember her as she had been, and let her harp continue to play the music she had enjoyed so much in life.

The party returned to Prism Keep, now knowing that there was nothing else on the cloud island to harm them. They slept soundly overnight in the Archmage's castle, and in the morning found him healthy and hale. He thanked them profusely for their assistance in clearing out the Keep of the monsters that had settled in during his helplessness, and in slaying his traitorous apprentice, Irinia. Along those lines, he offered an apprenticeship to Delphyne, should she ever find the desire to study with him in the Keep, an offer which the young witch politely declined for the present. He gave them a trunk full of riches, both magical and mundane, as tokens of his appreciation. Finally, observing their Guild rings, he asked to see one up close. Slayer passed his over to the elderly Archmage, and he he nodded sagely, apparently impressed with its workmanship. Then he passed a wand over it, mumbled a few arcane syllables, and gave it back. "An impressive teleport device," Alarius stated. "I've made a little upgrade: if you say my name while activating the ring, you will be teleported directly to the front door of Prism Keep instead of your normal location." Delphyne and Rale passed their rings over for similar augmentation, while Akari had to do without, having used his Guild ring to teleport a securely bound Kazmira back to Guild headquarters for a sizable reward.

Alarius steered Prism Keep off of the cloud island upon which it had foundered and back to the town where the party had left their horses and Old Clem. After they disembarked, they found that Old Clem had rung up quite a bar tab in their absence. They paid what he owed, gathered up their horses, and were soon on their way back to Greyhawk City.

ADVENTURE 23 - KAZMIRA'S REVENGE

PC Roster:
Immediately upon returning to Guild Headquarters, Old Clem saw to the quartering the horses in the attached stables while the others raced back to their living quarters. Cal was the first to meet them, and greeted them with a warm hello.

"Where's Gareth?" asked Rale. "Did he turn her in yet? How much was the reward?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," replied Cal. "Turn who in? What reward?"

"Forget it," responded Rale. "Gareth will know what we're talking about. Where is he?"

"No idea," replied Feron, walking in from the kitchen. "I haven't seen him in several days."

"Me neither," admitted Cal.

Neither had Chalkan. Neither had any of the Guild pages who ran about doing tasks for those who ran the Guild. This was getting to be very disturbing; not only had nobody seen Gareth in the past couple of days, but nobody was aware that the group had used Akari's Guild ring to "bink" in Kazmira the Magpie, all bound and trussed and ready to be turned in for a sizable reward for certain acts of thievery she had perpetrated amongst very high-profile businessmen in Greyhawk City. And worst of all, Gareth's room - once Rale had picked the lock to gain access - had been emptied of all of his personal possessions. It looked like Gareth had left the Adventurers Guild for good, possibly taking Kazmira with him. Or had she somehow overpowered him? But then why was his stuff missing?

There was only one thing to do. They needed a way to scry on either Gareth, or Kazmira, or both. "This is an Adventurers Guild!" grumbled Rale in exasperation. "Surely somebody around here has a crystal ball or something!"

Somebody did. The team went scrambling around to the other Wings, and a wizard from Wing Seven had a crystal ball she was willing to let Wing Three borrow for the day. Feron, being the only one among the team with any scrying experience, was the logical choice to use it.

"Who shall I concentrate on?" she asked the group at large. After some consideration, it was jointly decided that Gareth made more sense, since they had known him longer and he offered a better chance of success as a result.

Feron concentrated on Gareth, rubbing her hands over the crystal ball. "I see something..." she said, and as the others watched, an image started to form in the glass sphere. The rest of the group crowded around, eager to see.

It was Gareth, as seen from behind and a bit above. He was running, his right hand held in the left hand of a woman running at his side. It was hard to tell from the back, but she was the right height to possibly be Kazmira. Then she turned and looked directly at the viewers - or so it seemed; actually she was no doubt picking up on the magical sensor which was following them above head height, through which the crystal ball was showing their images - then turned away and concentrated on running. That quick glance was enough to confirm that it was, in fact, Kazmira. She must have said something to Gareth (sadly, the crystal ball was image-only, no audio, but beggars couldn't be choosers), for he turned around and looked up as well, but she brought his attention back to the task at hand and they turned their backs on the sensor and concentrated on running.

"Where are they?" asked Rale, eager to find them at once. Delphyne released both Iggy and Nocturna, asking them to fly above the city and see if they could spot Gareth.

"I can't tell," answered Feron, shaking her head in frustration. They're on cobblestones, I can tell that much. I'd bet they're still here in the city somewhere...."

As the group watched, the two slowed their running and approached a booth by a small bridge over a narrow rivulet of water. Gareth opened a coin purse and removed several coins, passed them to the man behind the booth, and received two tickets in return. Then the two took hands again and resumed running, this time over the small bridge and into what looked like a well-maintained park.

"Got it!" yelled Rale, upon spotting a trio of cavorting monkeys behind the bars of a cage. "That zoo place! Where we sold the rust monster!"

"Lord Henway's!" followed up Delphyne. "How soon can we get there?"

"Hold on!" interrupted Feron, still concentrating on the image in the globe before her. "They're doing something!"

"I'll bet she's dominated him or charmed him or something," replied Akari. "Can tieflings do that?"

"What are they doing?" asked Chalkan.

Kazmira had crawled past a safety chain and approached a large cage. She reached her hand into the cage, and a hand reached out at her. Three other hands gripped the bars of the cage, each nearly the size of that of an ogre. Kazmira slipped a ring off of her finger and slid it over one of the ogre-sized fingers of the hand reaching from the darkness of the cage. Then, she looked straight at the magical sensor through which the members of Wing Three were observing, and blew them all a kiss. Gareth looked straight at the sensor, and slowly raised his middle finger towards the viewers as Kazmira gave the ring on the unknown creature's hand a familiar double-tap.

The ogrish hand disappeared...

...and suddenly, there was a half-fiend girallon standing in the middle of Wing Three's communal living room.

This was an angry half-fiend girallon, one willing to vent its confusion at the sudden change in scenery and its anger over years of captivity on the assembled group of adventurers within view. It gave a mighty roar and leapt at the group, four powerful arms outstretched and ready to rend. There were frantic grabs for weapons while the spellcasters fired off a few quick spells. Fortunately for the group, even an enraged half-fiend girallon was little match for a band of seven seasoned adventurers, and before long it was dead.

Akari stepped over the body and pulled a metal band off of its finger. It immediately shrunk to a slightly smaller size, and Akari peeked at the inside of the band at the letters carved within, then quietly slipped it onto his finger.

"I got my Guild ring back," he replied.

- - -

This adventure came about by a wonderful confluence of events. I had no way of foreseeing that the group would take Kazmira alive, and then decide to "bink" her back to Headquarters using Akari's Guild ring. But after thinking through the possible consequences, I realized the following:

• Logan was not really interested in running Gareth as a character any more, realizing his general uselessness in combat.
• The rest of the group, in deciding which of Logan's characters to run during his absence, invariably chose to run Akari over Gareth.
• That meant that Gareth had been stuck on "backup duty" for months on end, while Akari got to go out on all the cool adventures. That couldn't but help cause a bit of resentment on Gareth's part against the rest of the party.
• I imagine Kazmira, upon "binking" naked and bound into the Wing Three living room and finding only an astonished Gareth there, would have the presence of mind to talk her way into getting Gareth to free her. After all, she could offer Gareth a lifetime of adventures with her, robbing from those who didn't deserve their riches. Didn't that sound better than waiting forever in a living room to replace an elven paladin who never needed replacing? (Plus, hot naked tiefling. That couldn't have hurt her chances any.)
• This was an opportunity too good to pass up: I could, in one fell swoop, ditch the unwanted Gareth, create a recurring villain in Kazmira, and pull an unexpected betrayal on the party that would have them hating Gareth with a white-hot fury.

So I did it, and it worked just as expected. I had PCs swearing blood oaths on Gareth's life. I had PCs coming up with ways they could track the two down. (After they had sent the half-fiend girallon to Wing Three's living room, the two must have activated some anti-scrying devices, because the crystal ball didn't pick them up after that.) And I had happy and active players heavily involved in my campaign world. All in all, it was a pretty good deal for a short adventure that involved one combat heavily lopsided in the PCs' favor.

Finally, for those of you wondering how Akari's ring was able to have "binked" the half-fiend girallon to Wing Three when it had already been used up in "binking" a bound Kazmira there earlier, there was a simple - and aggravating - explanation: Gareth had disguised himself as Akari (using his hat of disguise) and had the ring recharged by the Guild wizards who deal with such issues. As an added insult to injury, Gareth (as Akari) had the price of the recharge added to Akari's account. When Akari went to go get the ring recharged, he was told he had to pay for the last recharge before they'd do so again. That didn't do anything to endear Gareth to Akari in any way.

ADVENTURE 24 - THE STYES

PC Roster:
"The Styes" is an adventure by Richard Pett from Dungeon #121 that has grown a sort of cult following, and with good reason. It was on my list of "adventures I want to run," and by this time the party was of an appropriate level to send them through it. The Styes is a slum, and as I had mentioned before I had decided that my Greyhawk City was not going to be bound by any constraints of what the standard, out-of-the-box Greyhawk City was supposed to be like. Thus, the Styes became the slum part of the city. The fact that the map of the Styes shows it to be part of a coastal city was no deterrent, as I had previously made my version of Greyhawk City to be a coastal city as well, the better to fit in "War of the Wielded."

This adventure write-up won't be in the fiction format of the last three previous posts, in part because I don't want to give too many spoilers away and ruin it for anyone who might wish to run their PCs through the adventure, but also for the more practical reason that I don't recall all of the details. I will say that it brought about the death of Rale Bodkin, who was attacked by a fiendish kraken and devoured. He was later raised, but it left a bad taste in Rale's mouth, and to this day Dan insists that Rale shudders at the mere thought of sushi. As is often the case in D&D, the fact that Rale himself was killed wasn't as big of a disapointment as the fact that all of Rale's gear was left in the belly of the fiendish kraken, and thus was unrecovered. That meant that his luck blade (which he had for reasons I can no longer recall named Liverwurst) was no more. I vowed that in the near future I'd have to write an adventure that featured a quest for a replacement sword for Rale.

In the meantime, my penchant for building initiative cards for each of the new monsters (that is, monsters for which I didn't already have an initiative card) in a given adventure was paying off in dividends. I liked the fact that I got to decide what each of the monsters (and important NPCs) looked like, and it came in incredibly handy to thwart a particular bit of metagaming that was going on with Jacob. He had purchased a Monster Manual of his own with some Christmas money he had been given, and was reading up on the various monsters. (He tried doing it during play, but I quickly put a stop to that.) So the fact that there's an encounter in this adventure with some skum really threw everybody for a loop, especially as I never used the term "skum" to describe them, simply referring to them as "fish-men." The fact that I had avoided using the 3.5 Monster Manual illustration of the skum for my initiative card, preferring the Tony DiTerlizzi illustration from the AD&D 2nd Edition Monstrous Manual instead, was throwing poor Jacob into a frenzy. He had never seen the illustration before, and neither had Dan for that matter, since all of his previous (A)D&D gaming had been under 1st Edition. So there was no spouting off "It's a skum, it can do this and that and it's susceptible to this and has so many Hit Dice," which was a nice change. (I often kidded Jacob that if he continued to have his PCs be such "experts" about monster lore I was going to make him spend all of their available skill points on the appropriate Knowledge skills.)

This adventure was a rough one for me, miniatures-wise. I didn't have much in the way to accurately represent manticores, save for a few fill-in lions/tigers from a zoo animals set (and heaping helps of imagination). I was able to use some lizardmen minis I had on hand to represent the skum, and scorpions made adequate chuuls, but again, for the fiendish kraken and the aboleths, I had nothing. This may have been the first adventure where I decided that flat tokens were better than nothing, and started printing out appropriately-sized tokens to use in the place of miniatures. Fortunately, I was able to use multiple different images to represent different aboleths, and later took to numbering the individual tokens if I needed to use more than one of the same image. I used to cover the tokens I printed out with the same Con-Tact paper I had been using for my initiative cards, but eventually gave up that practice as well. Now I just print out tokens for any creatures I can't accurately represent, and when I'm done with them I put them in an old check box I keep for that purpose.

We did have another casualty in this adventure: Nocturna, Feron's eagle animal companion, was slain attempting to protect his mistress from one of the skum she and the others were fighting. After this adventure was over, she decided to call another eagle animal companion, and named this one Felix.

Slayer brought Fang along on this adventure, but I recall him still keeping his dire wolf out of combat for the most part. When it came time for Fang's actions, he'd often "snarl and growl and look impressive," but that was pretty much it. Soon after this adventure I had Piddilink Dundernoggin create a pair of gems that could be placed on the forehead of a trained animal and its master, and allowed Slayer and Fang to "field test" them at no cost. The stated purpose was to allow the master to give telepathic directions to his animal companion, but as with most things made by the shortcut-taking gnome, this one had a flaw, one which I held in reserve until the appropriate time to use it.

ADVENTURE 25 - THE WEAVERS

PC Roster:
"The Weavers" is an adventure by Richard Pett from Dungeon #139 that was written as a direct sequel to "The Styes." It involved a spider museum in the Styes and an unfortunate egg cluster of dangerous spiders ("Hastendeath" spiders) from the Underdark that would burst and run amok throughout the city if not stopped. As this campaign session took place over the summer, both of my boys were home from college and were able to play. That meant that Logan got to run Akari, and also that Mercutio Midas would be showing up as well. Since Mercutio had been created at the appropriate level for the one time Stuart had played with us before, we just had him level up to an appropriate level for the current group of PCs. Stuart had originally created a cleric of Pelor because he likes running clerics and because he had assumed that an extra source of healing would always be needed, but now he added rogue levels to Mercutio because he wanted to play him more like a swashbuckler.

"The Weavers" introduces a group of kenku called the Collectors, basically a group of information brokers that can be hired to find things out for a fee. I've since used them several times in other adventures, and I went out and got some kenku miniatures for this adventure. (I'm with Richard Pett - kenku are cool!)

We ran into a bit of "the way we play" vs. "the way Stuart plays" difficulties during this adventure. At one point, the party was fighting Hamfist, a crazy old dude, among the rotting old piers of the Styes. Stuart decided once again that he had a way to "win the game" with a single move, and decided that he could use the spell stone shape to warp the bedrock upon which the piers (and Hamfist's shack) were built, effectively using a 3rd-level spell to duplicate the effects of an 8th-level earthquake spell. He argued with me when I informed him that the spell couldn't be used in that way, and then he got all grumpy again and started building towers out his dice (something he knows irritates me to no end, as it's effectively saying "I'm here at the table but this is more interesting than paying attention to what's going on in your game").

There was a cool fight in the center of a hollowed-out lighthouse, the bottom of which is submerged and the top area of which has been criss-crossed with a web of ropes, upon which a nest of kenku perch. The PCs were inside this network of ropes, deciding how best to navigate their way down (because there were some vicious-looking eels patroling the waters below), and we had a "fog of war" mishap involving Cal (in heavy armor, and thus afraid of falling and drowning/being devoured) with a rope tied off around his waist and the other end tied around Feron's waist. (She wore boots of spider climbing, so Cal figured she was the most secure "anchor" available.) In all of the decision-making about the best way to proceed, Feron forgot that she was tied off to Cal and jumped off the rope she had been standing on, using feather fall to slow her descent. She only fell as far as the rope between her and Cal would play out, then came to an abrupt stop and ended up with the rope between her and Cal dangling from a criss-crossing kenku rope above the two of them. She went slamming into Cal, knocking him off the rope he was standing on, and plummeting him to the eels in the water below - which, naturally, sent Feron shooting up back to the top of the rope as Cal's rapid descent pulleyed her just as fast upwards. She finally got to a safe perch and pulled Cal out of the water, but it was an amusing "teabag" incident that for once didn't involve Akari. (Logan immediately tried to transfer the nickname of "Teabag" to Cal, but with no success.)

I got to reuse Logan's Huge Fiendish Spider miniature as a bebelith in this adventure, and I had a few other spider minis of various sizes that came in handy, but the majority of the monsters ended up being printed out on my printer and made into tokens.

"You must spread some experience ..."

Enjoy reading about the dynamics of your group play as much as reading about the adventures. My boys play in my weekly campaign (now ages 12 and 9) and does change some of how a group works, but as you note it's still a ton of fun.

My boys were about the same ages when I first started them on AD&D 2nd Edition...Stuart was about 10, and Logan was about 8. That was some 18 years or so ago - man, does time ever fly!

Johnathan