And continuing the game's tradition of ending on a wtf note . . .
This week the group set out to a nearby volcano, to try to befriend the dragon said to rule the mountain range, and to learn how to harness the mountain's fire magic. The group brought along a shaman from the ogre village.
Now, a few months ago these ogres attacked the PCs' home town and were driven off. The PCs then went to the ogre village on a sort of peace mission, and have befriended this shaman. The youngest member of the party (the player is 28, but he wanted to play a 14 year old so he had an excuse to be hyper emotional) has constantly pestered the shaman with questions about how to wield fire magic.
According to the ogre, all the town's shaman's trek into the burning mountains, then meditate on the volcano and make an offering of flesh into the fiery stone tongues of the mountain god (i.e., hide from the monsters roaming the area, smoke enough pot until you have a vision, then toss an animal sacrifice into a river of lava).
So the PCs set out, climb the mountains, fail spectacularly to befriend the dragon (she sees herself as a queen, and was quite offended when the PCs did not immediately bow to her or offer her some manner of tribute), and then head on to the volcano, hoping to salvage something from this journey.
The party's mages set to meditating or examining the flow of mana across the mountain. Meanwhile, the 14-year-old fighter who really wants to learn magic asks the ogre shaman to help him perform the proper rituals. They head off a short distance from the rest of the party, on the other side of a rocky rise, and stop within 15 feet of a lava river.
Now, the party first met this ogre shaman when the ogre had taken the 14-year-old fighter's mom as a prisoner, intending to sacrifice her. The PCs knocked him out, saved the mom, and rather than killing the ogre, they enlisted his help. So by this point he's been hanging out with the party for over a month, originally as a prisoner, then as an advisor. The guy has been having a bit of an identity crisis, because he used to be all gung-ho about wiping out the PCs' village, but now he respects their power, and the fact that they've been trying to help the ogres for the sake of mutual security, rather than killing them in revenge.
So it understandably catches him off guard when the 14-year-old starts shoving him toward the river of lava, shouting, "You tried to kill my mom!"
The shaman tries to calm him down, but when that fails he calls for help and starts fighting back. Within a few seconds the ogre is inches from falling into an ankle deep lava flow, avoiding his fate only because he's managed to grab onto the PC kid. At this point the rest of the party has arrived, and the kid's player knows he only has a round before the others stop him.
I explain to the player that if he shoves the ogre into the lava without first breaking the grab, he'll fall in too. (He is also well aware of my fondness for
Fire and Brimstone - the Comprehensive Guide to Lava, Magma, and Superheated Rock.)
But the player just gets an excited gleam in his eye, makes his check to try to escape the grab, and fails. Laughing now, he makes his bull rush attack, and shoves the both of them into the lava.
Since the party was right there, and I had previously described that the lava flow was only a few inches deep, I let the other PCs drag the kid and the ogre out before they are completely dead, but both are in the negatives, taking ongoing damage from molten rock that clings to their limbs. Even if they could survive, they'll both be crippled.
Which makes this a perfect opportunity for the party's one-eyed wizard to try out his newly acquired ritual: Stitch Together.