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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Silver Moon" data-source="post: 4189252" data-attributes="member: 8530">Chapter 29, “Serious Player Clashes”, March 24th , 1006 (Day Two): During the night Jerry talks to the other gnomes. He has decided that fighting vampires and ghouls is not what he signed on for, and he desires to leave. The gnomes agree to show him the location of a tunnel back to the surface. Jerry decides not to tell the party about his decision. Before leaving he also helps himself to a pair of potions from Serita’s backpack that she had gotten from the mad wizard at Restenford Castle which he considers to be rightfully his. The party awakens and are upset about finding Jerry gone. They are angry with the gnomes for helping him leave. Serita becomes enraged when she discovers that some of her potions are missing, and accuses the gnomes of being accomplices to the theft. To calm the party down one of the gnomes, a 1st level fighter named Freyland, volunteers to take Jerry’s place. The party agree to this, giving him the sack of torches, and declaring that he is to be the party’s new torchbearer. The party move on, soon coming to a room with around two dozen ogres. A fight follows, during which most of the ogres are slain. The two ogre leaders choose to flee, and the half-orc Eiowhah charges after them. They lead him into another room, which is home to a pair of trolls. The trolls attack the half-orc, giving the ogres a chance to escape. Eiowhah manages to get in two good attacks to each troll, for a total of fifteen hit points on each. The party hear the sounds of battle but decide to take their time getting there. They eventually enter the room, seeing that the half-orc is on his last legs. They watch as the trolls slay the half-orc, then enter into the battle themselves. The trolls are soon killed, then regenerate, and are killed again. The troll bodies are then burned. The party move on, eventually finding a place to stop for the night. [Chronicler’s Note #41: A very frustrating encounter for me. I had started the module with my Jerry character only to be informed a week later by the DM that he did not like assassins or want them in his module, and to expect to become the next casualty. I didn’t want the character killed, so I arranged with the DM to pull him out instead and introduce the Eiowhah character as his replacement. When this happened the other players got upset about the change, and decided not to support the new character. After the half-orc’s death the DM announced he would not let me bring in another character and handed me the NPC torchbearer to play for the reminder of the module.] March 25th, 1006 (Day Three): The party awakens and Klaaze asks Kharole to identify a robe that he had taken from the vampire. She identifies it as a Robe of Useful Items, which can only be used by a magic user. She asks if she can keep it and he refuses. Serita decides to help convince him and attempts to cast a spell on him. Klaaze realizes what she is doing, and punches Serita in the face to stop the spell. Hherrmyie becomes enraged at this, pulling the Scepter of Wishes from his backpack, pointing it towards Klaaze, and wishing for him to be critically wounded. Both Klaaze and Hherrmyie then collapse. The party discovers that Hherrmyie had used the Scepter one time too many, the item killing him with this fourth usage of it. Serita uses her cure spells to heal Klaaze’s wounds. The group has a long debate about what to do with Hherrmyie, deciding to bring him back. They have no resurrection devices, but Kharole has a Reincarnation spell, so they use it. He comes back, but is reincarnated in the form of an orc. Hherrmyie’s player adamantly refuses to accept this, loudly declaring for the first time that Hherrmyie’s father was an ascended elvan hero, who would have never allow that to have ever happened. The now frustrated DM replies “Fine, your father materializes and transforms Hherrmyie back. Your father then plane shifts both of them away from the material plane. Hherrmyie is never seen again.” The player sits and pouts for the remainder of the game. [Chronicler’s Note #42: A bit of background, Hherrmyie’s player was a few years younger than the other players in the group, being a friend who I knew from Boy Scouts that had also played D&D. During our first year he seemed to fit in fine with the others, but we began to have problems with him during the next year when he became infatuated with Serita’s player. The whole encounter above started because he was trying to impress her, and the situation then got out of hand.] The party moves on, finding a staircase down to the third level. The soon run into and defeat a large group of zombies. They next come upon a large sandy chamber housing a large stone pyramid. While investigating the outside of the pyramid a door is found and the party enter. They are then attacked by a large group of giant beetles that are soon killed. The group eventually find themselves in a room with a door that will not open. Using their combined strength, Phraakeese, Phuddipeduzh and Klaaze manage to pull it open. There is a vast pressure vacuum on the other side, which had been pulling the door shut. One opened, the vacuum pulls both Phuddi and Phraakeese inside, the door slamming shut again. The interior is actually another dimension, perhaps the elemental plane of air, where four semi-disembodied creatures holding some very solid weapons immediately attack Phrraakeese, killing him. Meanwhile, the others have managed to get the door open again, and use their backpacks to keep it propped open. Using a rope of anchor them, both Mark and Klaaze jump into the vacuum and help fight off the monsters while grabbing their friends. Klaaze loses his +2 magical broadsword in the process, but is comforted by the fact that it was only his secondary weapon. He also manages to grab onto a metal rod that one of the creatures was holding. Phuddi and Phraakeese are grabbed and the party the pull all of them out, shutting the door behind them. The rod is identified as being one of Resurrection, which nobody in the party can use as they did not bring a cleric. [Chronicler’s Note #43: By this point there was already a lot of tension around the table, given that I was upset over loosing my new character, and the term “upset” doesn’t even come close to describe the body language radiating from Hherrmyie’s player. Add to this that there had been a growing consensus for the characters to quit the adventure and just go back the way they came. The party was still only on the third of six levels, and had been told that each level would be more difficult than the last. Several players already had complained about the module being too difficult for their character levels. The DM’s decided to appease the growing unrest by giving them the resurrection device. His plan backfired, with one player now voicing that the group wanted to earn powerful magic, not have it just be given to them.  Another player then voiced that the DM was attempting to “bribe the group to stay in his deathtrap”.  Two players then voiced complaints about the battle in the vacuum, pointing out that the monsters had all targeted Phraakeese until he was dead while totally ignoring the character Phuddipeduzh, being played by the DM’s fiancé.  The DM took offense at having his impartiality questioned.  He angrily stated that he had randomly rolled who each creature would attack, and they all just came up against Phraakeese. Before the conversation got even further out-of-hand I intervened and strongly suggested that we just stop and break for the night, even though we had over an hour of scheduled time left. Everyone concurred, and we all departed in silence, with most people walking away angry. A game had been scheduled for the following week, although I seriously wondered if the group would ever meet again.]</blockquote>

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