NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="erucsbo" data-source="post: 3069412" data-attributes="member: 40110">another Region I session last night (and it will be 6 weeks until the next one). Missing were the players of F8 and F3/W5. I figured with F7, S8, x2 C8 and W3/C3/MTh2 the party had enough firepower to be able to ignore the missing characters. They had found I4 (and Eight-Strike Fang) in the previous session and were contemplating what to do when I decided to up the tempo. Stumbling in to the secret room came 5 drow. I allowed spot rolls to determine that the weapons were not in the best shape (one of the clerics has Weapon smithing) and their leather armour wasn't fitting properly. The party came to the conclusion that these were escaped slaves and for once didn't decide to fight first and ask questions later. I had one of the drow ask the party first in Undercommon (which of course only the drow NPC understood) and then in elven (which the h/e MTh could speak) what they were doing there and whether or not they were friend or foe. I had Jaxom (the drow NPC) talk a bit to them (in both undercommon and elven before saying to revert to common for the rest of the group). I mentioned on several occasions (and guestured as well) that both the drow and Jaxom seemed nervous or fidgetty - don't think anyone got the hint  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Weapons were stowed and the drow told the party about Siglinde, about their route from Siglinde's area to I4 (and how they had to move quickly and quietly and without going down side-passages through the area with the Gricks), and that Siglinde's was a crossroad to the SpiderKings, Madness area (where once again they raced through), and Mahir's Lab area (which they avoided). They said that they negotiated with Siglinde and did tasks for her for being allowed to go through her area (so the party knows that she can be negotiated with). I hinted about the GreenDeath, and it looks like the party are interested in heading towards Mahir's cache (yay!).They left I4 and proceeded to I16 (with the purple slime - now that they knew that it wouldn't cause them any major problems apart from being a bit sticky). Instead of taking the direct route through however, they all decided to troop down the dead-end passage to check for secret doors. So of course on their way back through the room to the southern passage was when the Gricks burst out of the rubble right next to the party. They only had themselves to blame and single file in the middle of the group were the two unarmoured arcane spellcasters - can you say brown trousers?They survived, using up a fair bit of curing and headed to I18. The sorcerer used Shadow Magic to conjure a bear to check out the room. I had it pass out of sight in the rubble before shrieks and rending noises indicated that it had encountered something. They then decided to lob a fireball in the room - note - this is a room "choked" with rubble that "kisses the ceiling" (sigh). Roll d20 (result is a 2) so I had the fireball pea only travel 5' before impacting some rubble and going off, and because it is a spread, not a burst, managed to backblast down the corridor to the rest of the party (most of whom made their saves). More healing of the almost crispy sorcerer (plus the last of the lessor restorations when he failed the fort save for his HP going under his Con) and they decided to not try I18 but head for I17 - where they decided to open every friggin' door (double sigh).Inside the first they found that the flesh on the walls had been rended and bitten off by something (clue 1). They also heard a door creak further up the corridor (clue 2). Behind the 5th door they found a grick tearing flesh off the wall (clue 3), so they decided to wait until it came out of the rrom before wellying on it - which of course made enough noise to alert the other dozen or so gricks in the area.Big fight ensued with the party eventually victorious (and me taking great delight in telling the (now non-magical) spiked chain wielding fighter that she couldn't do AoO on many of the Gricks as they moved from 10' to 5' away because they had cover (either from other gricks or walls)). The fighter had dropped below Con in HP and despite being a dwarven fighter still failed the fort save and now has "the Curse of Madness" (+2 Str, +2 Con, -6 Cha and DC20 will to avoid going crazy and attacking nearby creatures) for 4 days.Next encounter will most likely be Siglinde or her minions, and I'm going to do the Eva Gabor voice (thanks rvalle) <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":]" title="Devious    :]" data-shortname=":]" /></blockquote>

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