Slain by Elf

Start with the monk class. Take the sunder feats. Optimise the character for his sundering weapons. Now take him in to the heart of combat but don't attack. Instead, always ready an action to sunder the weapon of anyone who attacks you.

As monks can attack using any part of their body, what essentially happens is that you end up standing still as opponents break their weapons over you. It doesn't matter what weapon they use or where they hit you, the weapon will shatter when it strikes the Iron Monk.

Left is the righteous path. It has been so since the days of Metrius the paladin, the simpleton who was forever taking us down left-hand corridors whatever the evidence that we should be heading in a different direction. He may have had a point, though.

'You know why we had a problem in that room, don't you?', says Brennan. 'We turned right, not left.'

'Did we have a problem in that room?', asks Skelra.

'...yes. I caught mummy rot!' Yeah, we'll see. It's probably just a joke by the GM.

We stumble in to what looks like a disused storeroom in the Asmodean Knot. There are bits and pieces stashed everywhere, and a small source of magic tempts Brennan and Afutavere in to look for it. They are both somewhat startled, but not surprised, when an atrophied humanoid stumbles out from behind something and starts to attack.

Afutavere tries to identify the creature, with its missing arm, foot, and jaw. 'Is it either human or undead?'

'It might be. Make your roll.'

'Okay, I get a 25, or more. 27 if it's human, 29 if undead. And 31 if we're in an urban area. Which we're not, what with being in a completely different plane as part of the Asmodean Knot.'

Well, thanks for mentioning it, all the same. Despite his elastic skill check results, the elf has no idea what we're looking at, perhaps even wondering if it counts as humanoid, what with it having only one arm. His failure to identify the creature has him reeling in shock. At least, we think it's shock, as Afutavere stands stock-still. But, no, it's just that he has predictably failed his first saving throw of the evening and has been paralysed with fear.

Brennan has no problem with seeing the creature and starts fighting back, although perhaps not giving quite as good as he's getting. The creature gets a couple of good hits in before the rest of us can enter the room. I dash in from further down the corridor, not quite getting in to attacking range, as does the Paladin, neither of us a-feared by the creature's aura. Skelra seems unaffected too, and mutters a few words that could be a spell. 'It's alright, lads', he tells us, although perhaps not quite so cockney, 'I've told it not to attack me or my allies'. We're not quite sure if this means it won't attack the paladin, and nor is the creature. It takes a shared glance between it and Skelra for it to back down completely.

Our necromancer has gained command of the creature, pretty much ensuring it is some kind of undead, and has told it not to attack. Thankfully, we can tame our own monster and keep paladin Ganelon from breaking the command so that we have a ceasefire, at least for the moment. 'It's a mummy', says Skelra, getting a closer look.

'And I've been wounded by it', says Brennan, suddenly feeling a little queasy. Yes, one of our party has been inflicted by mummy rot, the apocryphal disease that we use to scare players in to attending sessions. But everyone is here tonight! It's such a waste. Had anyone been missing there would have been weeks of fun kicked off by handing back the character sheet with 'mummy rot' scribbled on the top, as we normally do whether they have the disease or not. The initial disbelief and joking, the persistence of our apparently running gag, and the inevitable realisation, all missed!

Our fears have been mastered. All four rooms have been entered, and we've faced fire, blood, snakes, spiders, and clowns. Something like that. As the final beastie in each room pooed out a gem of sorts we take them all back to the central room and present them to the ghostly voice that told us to face our fears in the first place.

The voice appears as an impish creature, flying down to congratulate us on being sane. 'Ask me questions, I can help. Six times I will answer', she says.

Ah, that's interesting. We may get cryptic answers, but being able to find out about the Asmodean Knot, Chelish Crux, or the greater scheme we've got ourselves involved in could be invaluable. But we should consider our limited number of questions carefully.

'Can we really ask you six questions?', asks Brennan, immediately before the rest of the party jumps to force a gag on him.

The spider swarm hits the elf, who fails his third saving throw of the session. He suffers 2 strength damage, to go with his constitution damage from the vipers, which his cat shrugged off, and wisdom damage from earlier in the Asmodean Knot. 'I can't use my bow now because I can't pull it properly', he says.

What a feed line. I don't if I should say 'fnarr' or 'it's never stopped you before'. Luckily, we have enough bodies present to cover all the bases.

Our elf's faith in his abilities is shaken once more, wondering if we really have a ranger and his pet cat, or a cat and his pet ranger. 'In the last two fights, I've killed nothing and my cat has killed two monsters', he opines. But I think he's being unfair to his cat, as it's probably not just the past two fights where the cat has bettered the elf.

'At least at 5th level I have a better attack bonus than the cat.'

'It's still better than you with a bow. And not just because of your strength damage.' In the next fight, we are fully expecting to see the cat ride the elf in to combat.

The fourth and final room of phobias has a ceiling covered with webs.

'Spiders!', says Ganelon.

'No, bats!', Brennan corrects him.

No, it really is spiders. The webs start rattling and...

'The web's are rattling?', says Ganelon.

'Yes. Do you have a problem with that?' Thinking back to the snake room, Ganelon decides he's okay with rattling webs, and a swarm of spiders drops down from the ceiling. Or, rather, a dire bear does.

'Yes, I've gone a bit Grahamy', the GM says, referring to a departed member of the group who had a habit of reaching for the first miniature to come to hand from the box, rather than a representative miniature, leading to some interesting encounters with badgers when we were fighting bugbears. The replacement miniature this time is even more apropos because of Graham's fondness for playing druids that could shape-shift in to dire bears. Even so, the hunt for the correct miniature continues, as we know we have a spider swarm somewhere. Not that having the right miniature stopped Graham.

Ah, the spider swarm is found and replaces the dire bear, much to our disappointment. We're not disappointed at the increased verisimilitude of having the right miniature, more that we are better equipped to fight a dire bear than a swarm of anything.

The next phobia is snakes. As the paladin and ranger walk in to the room vipers appear from holes in the wall and strike! A viper slithers towards the ranger's cat, warps itself around it, and...

'Vipers aren't constrictors', says Ganelon, 'they don't wrap themselves around anything'.

'Oh, undead you have no problem with, but the first sight of snakes and you're David Attenborough!' The first viper strikes at the cat and misses. The other six snakes all change course and charge the paladin, as he's such a snake expert.

We have three more fears to face, but after fighting fire we can't quite remember what the others are. Something to do with spiders, snakes, and maybe public speaking. We wander down the stairs to the auditorium to get the speech out of the way first only to see wicker cages suspended above us that stir with life. Stirges fly down and attack!

Ah, right, this is us facing our fear of blood. I don't think we'll have a problem, we've seen plenty of our own blood so far. The first stirge swoops down and latches itself firmly on to Skelra and starts to suck his blood. All in one swing, Ganelon takes a swipe at a stirge in mid-air to slice it in two and cleaves downwards aiming for the tiny winged beast on Skelra.

Skelra freezes in panic as our paladin swings at him. 'What's wrong? You always said that you were going to die to the paladin once we reached 5th level.'

'Yes, but I was expecting him to cast detect evil first.' Luckily, Ganelon is assuming everything around him is evil to save time, and his morning star unerringly finds the stirge on the necromancer, leaving behind just the legs and proboscis of the blood-sucker.

The tiefling is defeated. But only after his short sword strikes Ganelon and the paladin's eminently failable fortitude saving throw actually fails, thanks to a roll of a natural 1, causing the rest of the party to cheer with sympathy; and the elf's cat companion gets a full-round attack on the tiefling, striking with claws, claws, and a bite against a flanked and prone target. Needing only 6s to hit, the impressive rolls of 6, 1, and 1 end up barely grazing the tiefling, which is what you get when a ranger teaches the companion animal.

But the tiefling is defeated and we move on through the rooms, until we manage to bypass the simple corridor we could have walked down instead of the complex rooms of magically shifting doors populated with monsters. We dodged a bullet there.

Entering the room has a voice tell us we need to face our fears, which sounds like fun. Brennan picks the first of four rooms to enter, the rest of us follow. Skelra and I know that we are about to face a fiery challenge, as only we can read the infernal sign, so let the rest of the party know too.

As we enter the room a bunch of candles flare up and blind Brennan before some fire elementals, probably, appear. We aren't entirely sure what they are, as Brennan is the fellow with the knowledge skills, but they look fiery and elementalish.

'I have knowledge–history. Have we fought them before?'

'That's not how history works.' Oh well. But never mind, Brennan's blinding is temporary and he identifies them quickly enough, although common sense has told us not to try to put our tongues on them.

Three elementals are reduced to ashes efficiently, leaving the last remaining elemental a choice of targets now surrounding it. 'This one will attack...', says the GM, assessing the situation, 'the paladin, because the mage isn't here now.'

'That's not fair!', says the paladin. 'If I leave the room, will it go for someone else?'

'If you leave the room', I say, 'I'm getting the evil, intelligent glaive out of the handy haversack (unbranded) and having a go at you myself'. That weapon will be a bone of contention for a little while longer, but it keeps the paladin present for the failed attack.

The last fire elemental is extinguished, leaving us three more fears to face.

The door separating the party magically opens again, reuniting bard and mage with monk, paladin, and ranger. Well, I say ranger, it's more that we have a cat with an elf companion. But now we can join the fight against the tiefling, as Brennan and Skelra enlighten us as to the mechanism for the doors' opening and closing.

To make sure we all get in the room before all the doors shift again I tell the paladin to straddle the doorway to prevent it from closing prematurely.

'No.'

Damn, he saw through my advanced ruse. At least it means we won't split the party again, so to speak.