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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MortalPlague" data-source="post: 6068213" data-attributes="member: 62721">This is the second half of the fifth session.  Where we left off, the heroes had just defeated the bandit queen, and were standing in the camp amidst the corpses of her followers.A RivalWhile the party looted, secured the lost food, and generally dragged all the bandit corpses into one place, Brelf was chosen to run back to town with Illantha Fane's head so the guards would send out some wagons to retrieve the food.  In the camp, however, four adventurers on horses approached.  Their leader was a magnificent cleric of the god of trickery, a dark-skinned demagogue named Pohtep.  He shared a horse with Daria, an assassin rogue masquarading as a simple harem girl.  An elf archer named Shirk followed, as did a feral human fighter named Felicia Lunarlynx.  They greeted the party, made mention that they'd come because they saw smoke (from the bonfire).  Pohtep, they learned, was a glib fellow, using words to mesmorize, offering insult and backhanded compliment more often than not.  In short, Pohtep was a dick.  They discovered that he was seeking something from the Hall of Bells - the very destination of their next venture.Under the hood: Pohtep is a character I played in a 4th Edition game, run by one of the current players.  He was enormous fun, all charisma and cleverness, always maneuvering for a political edge in the ruthless Aztec-style city the game was set in.  Felicia Lunarlynx was a fighter played by a friend of mine (not a current player) in a 5th Edition playtest.  She fought through some of Blingdenstone.  I promised to use her as one of the adventurers in my campaign.Pohtep rode on towards town, while the others lingered to await Brelf's return.  Brelf himself met the riders on the rode, and after a brief exchange of insults, he passed them by and arrived at the camp.  Wagons followed, unloading the food, and the adventurers were well rewarded for their deeds.More importantly, the group filled Brelf in on the nature of the threat that was Pohtep.  The man seemed competent, and could pose a serious threat to their efforts at claiming Queen Teera's necklace.  While the others set about preparing for the journey, Estel took it upon herself to try and take Pohtep out of the picture.  Direct confrontation would be too obvious, but instead she hired one of the Mourning Girls to kidnap Daria, the rogue (and apparently, Pohtep's woman).  The kidnapping succeeded the night before, but Pohtep tracked down and murdered the girl who took Daria, and showed up angry on the morning of Parade Day.Under the hood: I ran this with a couple of d20 rolls to see the results.  Pohtep crit his attempt to find Daria.  It was no contest; he showed up to enter the tomb.The adventurers all marched up the mountain and entered the Hall of Bells.  The PCs had enlisted the aid of two NPC warriors: a grizzled northman named Zarchus, and a slick rogue named Myrielle.  The Ivory Lady was accompanying them as well; though not as capable as her hired champions, she was good enough to keep up.  That meant the PC group numbered eight strong, while Pohtep's only numbered four.  But they were a potent four.The PCs went first, but in the upper cavern, they decided to get their bearings.  The knew that the dungeon rotates, and they knew which chamber the Hall of Bells was beneath.  So armed with that knowledge, they spent an hour getting their bearings, descending to the second level, and marching up to the correct wing of the dungeon.Pohtep had the opportunity to reach the Hall first, but I rolled a d4 for which direction he picked and came up with the wrong one.  So the PCs were first into the Hall.I won't go into much detail about their early encounters; they went inside, explored the South Cells, and found the skeletons and zombies there to be an easy challenge.  They took down some undead, then heard Pohtep and his band approaching, which is where we ended the session.Under the hood: I hadn't updated the monster numbers to reflect the huge boost in xp budget in this packet.  So they fought only two skeletons and four zombies in the first chamber, then two zombies from the storage room, followed by two skeletons from the North Cells.  The whole fight was trivial; only the zombies' ability to stay up made it anything close to interesting.  Still, it's fun for players to have a stomp from time to time.<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?332912-Custom-Playtest-Dungeon-Hall-Of-Bells" target="_blank">Hall of Bells</a> - this is the dungeon my PCs were attempting.  Included is the whole map, with updated monster numbers, and the stats for Pohtep and his company.</blockquote>

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