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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 6038543" data-attributes="member: 3586">We had six players for this session, surprisingly with no henchmen. Well, that was until the group decided to go to the nearby larger town (Borton, Borston, might end up being Borsby) with Reece’s character, Xury, trying to buy some glowing chalk and Rich’s character, Zarlac, recruiting some henchmen.During the week, I’d picked up a copy of Ed Greenwood’s Forgotten Realms book, which is absolutely excellent. (I haven’t been so excited about the Realms since I got that original box set back in 1987). In it, Ed describes how many of his sessions would begin with the PCs discussing what they wanted to do next rather than Ed railroading them into anything. The trouble with running groups that way is that it requires a lot of information about the world that the players can use to make their decisions, and I’m rather terrible at creating a lot of small details. And then remembering them later.However, for this session I was quite happy for the players to decide what to do next. And so, off they tromped to Borsby, where Zarlac went in search of henchmen by hitting all the pubs and Xury went to find the local magician, Marley the Magnificent. Such fine Viking names I’m using here. Having a cheat-sheet of sample Viking names would have been helpful; I’ve just prepared one, but (of course), I’ll probably forget to bring it to my next session.Marley wasn’t seeing visitors, so instead Xury got to deal with his apprentice, Joshua. And what a fine conversation they had! Joshua was rather scornful of Xury’s desire for glowing chalk, and there was a great misapprehension about what it was he wanted. Xury decided to call it “chalk of illumination” and Joshua decided that it was the type of “illumination” that meant knowledge. I must confess, my use of illumination in such a fashion owed a lot to my childhood reading (and rereading) of Dear Monkey, an abridged version of the Journey to the West. A few things have stayed with me and they came up to torment Reece this session, much to my amusement and that of the players.Eventually Xury got it all straightened out and, although the initial price was quite high, was able to bargain a sack of Fafnir’s dragon scales for the chalk and - in addition - a rope of climbing. Mind you, it would take some time to get the chalk, but that was the price you pay for wanting a new magic item.Meanwhile, I quickly created seven possible henchmen for Zarlac to hire, and we went through the recruitment process. Jesse was quite convinced that they all had low intelligence scores, which probably displays a certain similarity in how I role-played them. I did do enough distinguishing between them so that Rich didn’t end up hiring the best one on offer... a neutral evil magic-user with great stats. The alignment would probably have gotten in the way, though. Instead, he hired a fighter and a magic-user (the latter a one-time apprentice of Marley) and we were up to eight characters for the rest of the session.Reece got inspired at this point, and decided to set up a wiki site for the campaign. I was quite amenable to this (perhaps it would help keep track of some of the minor details like town names that I forget), and Reece started on it as the session progressed. Along the way, I threw in a couple of rumours that the group could investigate: a rise in bandit attacks and the mysterious disappearance of two tax collectors. The latter was approved of heartily by the group, and suggestions that they should investigate were shouted down; the less tax collectors in the world the better!However, bandits were something they were interested in tracking down and so they did - an entire band of 90 of the poor fools, plus about ten higher-level bandits. The initial confrontation against a third of the bandits ended rather abruptly for the bandits (save the running) after Latud used fireball against half of them, and then the elven-cloaked Xury went to amuse himself by getting rid of the horses of the remaining bandits. He realised that this wasn’t perhaps the best of plans as they detected him (untying horses is not the most stealthy of endeavours), and was forced to climb a tree to escape them before the rest of the party arrived to save him. Alas, they didn’t take heed of my suggestion to fireball his tree, but the remaining bandits, including one lieutenant, didn’t survive long. Well, long enough to tell the group where their main force was.Travel without horses made the trip take longer than it should have, but eventually the group found the bandit stockade and attacked it - mainly with fireballs, which made most of the lower-level bandits flee. However, that left the remaining bandits - from levels 3-8 as fighters and a level 8 magic-user - coming for them. Latud engaged in a magic missile duel with the magic-user, and was fortunate enough to win both initiative rolls and slay him before he could fireball the party. The fighters were much tougher, as none of the characters at this session were fighters! Armour class 2 is very, very hard to hit, and the battle took quite a long time. Eventually the group was victorious, but it wasn’t a sure thing.The group got a lot of loot from this victory, including ten magic items! Of most import was the +2 longsword and the ring of 18/00 strength that Xury took; now the halfling was invincible! Or, at least, he liked to think so.From there, the group returned to Jarlston, the town of the Oracle’s Dungeon, and made their way into that dungeon. The group had neglected to bring maps, but they had Reece’s memory, and he guided them down to the oracle and then they went in search of more stairs... which they failed to find. We were getting short of time, so instead they discovered a few monsters to kill: first a group of six ogres. This proved to be a memorable encounter: Xury attacked with superior surprise and killed three of them before they could react. Backstab with +7 to hit, +8 to damage which is then tripled? Oh my, yes. (Reece later realised he should have been rolling a d12 for damage and not a d8...) However, Xury also has an AC of 5, so when the ogres acted, they smashed him hard. The rest of the group came to his rescue, but Xury had been quite badly hurt by that encounter.So, when Xury got hit by the troglodytes in the next encounter, he was almost killed. (He then made sure that he was healed!)The final room the group investigated for the day had a towel-rack and an occupied shower cubicle; a beautiful woman was inside, showering. Latud decided to take all his clothes off and join her. She proved to be a highly adept magical practitioner who was not well-disposed to the intrusion. Latud is still alive, but mostly because I was nice. Xury did try to attack her, but that didn’t go so well, and the group fled the dungeon in some haste.The Party:Asmundr (Josh) - cleric 6Zarlac (Rich) - thief 8Charles (Clayton) - thief 1Farin (Lee) - cleric 5Xury (Reece) - thief 7Latud (Jesse) - magic-user 7Jared (NPC) - fighter 1Alara (NPC) - magic-user 1</blockquote>

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