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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LostSoul" data-source="post: 4833848" data-attributes="member: 386">We played on Wednesday.First up: the fight with the gnolls.  The situation: Hekubus is unconcious on the floor, 20' below the other PCs.  Down there with him are 4 hungry hyenas (tearing the flesh off a gnoll tied to a rack in the middle of the room) and a gnoll huntmaster.  Up on the balcony level, the rest of the PCs are duking it out with a gnoll claw fighter and an orc.  Lendil is the only one out of melee.The huntmaster was up first, shooting at Hrogar, and what did I roll?  A 20.  A bad omen!  Hrogar would have gone down but there was only one gnoll ally next to him.  Lucky dwarf.Instead of drinking a potion, Apothis stepped back and blasted the orc and the gnoll clawfighter in his face.I think Hrogar attacked the clawfighter, hurting him.The orc dropped Hrogar in return.The clawfighter charged at Lendil and clawed him good, but I rolled snake-eyes for damage.  Lendil survived to blast the claw fighter in the face, and that was enough to kill him.The huntmaster missed Apothis with his arrow, so Apothis fed a potion to Hrogar.  The dwarf threw a rope over the ledge to Hekubus, once Hekubus was back up, he tried to climb the rope but failed.  Apothis yanked him over the edge.The orc tried to charge Lendil but was struck down by an OA from Hrogar's spirit dog.With all the PCs up on the balcony, no bad guys left there, the PCs decided to retreat back to the water shrine room.  They barred the doors and waited for the gnolls to come; they heard some demonic voices and the angry laughing of hyenas but the gnolls did not go through.  (It would have been certain death for them.)The PCs took the time to cast Hand of Fate, getting lucky with the wandering monster rolls.  The Hand of Fate lead them to the safest way out of the dungeon, through a secret door into a large cavern.  They could hear water falling somewhere close by, and they could see a pool that was draining out to somewhere even deeper.There Apothis spotted a choker.  Hekubus tried to parlay with it.  It held out its rubbery arm and ask for "shinies".  Hekubus gave it 1 gp, then a bunch of copper, and it got pissed off at the meager amount and slinked off into the darkness.As they crept through the dark chamber, Apothis heard some steps on what sounded like a wooden bridge above them.  He blasted whatever it was with lightning, lighting up the room in a flash.  Two dark creepers were on a bridge 30' above the PCs and three chokers were closing in on them.  At the far end of the room was a waterfall.And Apothis spotted a big, vague shape lurking in a nearby cave.Lendil blasted the dark creepers, knocking one of them off the bridge; it barely held on at the last second (otherwise 3d10 damage + an extra 1d8 for being pushed onto a stalagmite).  Hrogar summoned his spirit hound and it bit the fingers of the dark creeper, causing the shadow creature to fall to its death.They fight with the chokers while the dark creeper makes a fighting retreat.  One choker gets his rubbery hands around Lendil's neck and plans to throw him into the whirlpool, but he's pushed away before he can try.  Apothis goes down (totally out of Healing Surges and HP) but is brought back up to 1 HP as the chokers are being killed off.The PCs make it to the waterfall, leaving one choker and the dark creeper behind.  As they tie their ropes to escape, they see a large black dragon, its mouth a twisted mass of chaos-warped teeth.  Ah, there's the chaos tooth.  It'll have to wait, though.  The PCs climb up the waterfall and back into Fallcrest.They rest in Fallcrest, levelling up.  In the morning, Bairwin Wildarson says that he's leaving and he'd like the PCs to come with him.  He'll pay them 5 gp each!"We're staying until tomorrow," Hekubus responds.  "We'll either leave with you then or we'll be dead."The PCs head back down the waterfall, ready for round 2 with the chaos-tooth dragon.  They crack a sunrod and light up the cavern.  They spot the surviving choker hiding in a crack in the wall, the dark creeper up on a ledge, and the dragon in the cave.Apothis thinks there's something strange about that dragon, and there is.  It's an illusion.  He can see through it and he warns the rest of his companions (who are busy killing the choker) about it.  The dark creeper hides and tries to kill Hrogar's spirit companion but fails.Apothis goes to grab the sunrod from the middle of the room, near the lip of the pool, and the dragon explodes from it and bites him!  Oh noes!  The fight is on.The PCs kill the choker and turn their attention on the dragon, ignoring the dark creeper for now.  Apothis slows it and it starts to lose its place in the water, slipping down the whirlpool.  It gets divine challenged and attacked a bunch of times and is pretty hurt - so it crawls out on dry land and creates a cloud of darkness around itself.The PCs succeed in pushing it out of the darkness enough to get a clear shot once or twice at it, but it heads back in.  The dark creeper, meanwhile, keeps throwing daggers at Apothis (and hitting).  Hekubus engages it inside the cloud but it proves to be a hard fight; every time he misses the dragon it whips him and pushes him with its tail.The PCs decide to focus on the dark creeper while the dragon is in the cloud (Hekubus harassing it with javelins).  The dark creeper tries to sneak down from the ledge it's on but falls.  It sneaks around using its Dark Step and stabs Apothis, who goes down.Hekubus doesn't engage the dragon on one turn so it steps out of the cloud and breathes acid on Apothis, Hrogar, and the Dark Creeper.  Apothis is burnt to a crisp.  Dead-dead.Hekubus gets into melee with the dragon and hits it, drawing blood; it uses its Bloodied Breath on Hrogar and Hekubus, dropping Hekubus.  Meanwhile the Dark Creeper stabs Lendil a few times.  Lendil steps back and blows the creeper away.Hekubus grabs Hrogar's limp body and runs to the waterfall where he washes the acid off his body.  The dragon recharges its breath weapon and catches all the PCs, and they fall.He still had 1 AP left, which he was going to use on any PC who survived that last breath weapon!That was that, a TPK.  The line between TPK and "we're okay" is finer than I thought!  Hekubus never did make his final death saves, so he might escape, though Lendil's player is moving away so he's dragon meat.  Hrogar and Apothis were both down to -bloodied, so they're gone.We are making up new PCs (unless Hekubus wants to chance the death save rolls); I'm not sure what the hook is yet, they may be a few River Rats who want to branch out on their own.I think that fight was tough but fair, 4 level-3 PCs at top form against the lvl 4 solo, dark creeper, and choker (level 6? encounter).  They made their choice to face it; they knew what they were facing but didn't make any plans for it (though I don't know what kind of plans they could have made; they did have enough cash to buy some potions of resistance).</blockquote>

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