Chapter 4-- WTF, nobody dies?
Four: To the Darkest Ground Comes a Light.
(or, "Say hello to my little friend!")
Overall, the party has rooted out the nefarious evil plaguing the Inn at Hommlet, renamed the Inn, cleared out the moathouse, put to the sword the Prazrael cultists lurking there, and got their collective ass kicked in an ambush in Knulb. After beating (but not killing) Faust, and armed with a pair of his magic items, the party makes their first foray into the Temple itself:
After discovering the top level to be empty, our Keystone Adventurers explore a well leading down into the depths of the dungeon. Lucius and Gnomishic scout down the well, and true to form try to assassinate the high-level priest waiting below. The priest's familiar (an imp) causes a moment of concern, but is led astray by Gnomishic's clever use of a Cherubic illusion. But no illusion can help Lucius, as his friends came rappelling down the rope tied to his waist (!), sending him crashing to his near-death below. Only blind luck saves him from certain death in his very first encounter.
Illustration:
No illusion can help Lucius, as his friends come rappelling down the rope tied to his waist . . .
Other PCs fall into the well, some more gracefully than others (Suhe being a prime example of the graceful faction). Eventually, and with 3 of their number broken, bleeding and unconscious, the PCs manage to kill the cleric of Iuz, a fifth level prelate by the name of Romag. Adding insult to injury, the victors forget to loot the room, ignoring obvious magical objects on an evil altar, and run like all of the Abyss is chasing them.
The second assault on the Temple Dungeons is a much more proficient affair, however. Using sound dungeon-delving strategies, the PCs find a +3 crossbow bolt during a careful room search (which Lucius has
blessed by Canon Turgeon and vows to use to assassinate an Iuzian priest).
A subsequent encounter with a few gnolls turns into an all-out brawl in which the party fights some 19 gnolls, 4 flinds, 11 hyenas, and a pair of bugbears who must have been slumming. Bloody but victorious, our heroes return to the surface, dripping with gnoll gore and loot! The party snatches some treasure, and rescues 8 prisoners, four of whom have some soldiering experience and agree to stay on as men-at-arms.
Unfortunately, these men's levels totaled equal Little-Leaf's charisma bonus: zero. But hey, warm bodies . . .
As the party returns to the surface, Lucius and Gnomishic remain in the gnoll lair, disguising themselves as corpses in order to gather intelligence on the response-time to battles in the Temple Dungeon. To their surprise (and relief!), only a wandering ogre with indigestion and a few elite orcs (wearing Iuz-branded mail, carrying fine weapons, and all built like Jesse 'the Body' Ventura) show up, looking surprised to see the carnage.
The next day, the party assaults the tower in the NE corner of the Temple surface compound, getting sliced into ribbons by the set-up. A well placed
stinking cloud by Tisha, along with a blast from her
wand of lightning (thanks, Heydricus!) tips the scales, and Rose and Lucius get to have a field day murdering the bandits left helpless by the
stinking cloud.
Discovering that a secret passage in the tower leads to a farmhouse near Knulb, the party moves in, and makes the tower their base of operations. Six more men at arms sent by the Nine Sisters (okay, so the Iuzian forces killed one of them, they're still called the Nine Sisters!) show up, and our heroes set about fortifying their new base-camp.
