Slain by Elf

'Why did I move?' asks Gruknal, returning to the fray after missing a round of combat when leaving early last week. 'I don't get pushed, I'm a dwarf.' It's true, a dwarf has racial features which Gruknal has boosted with feats that mean he is rarely subject to forced movement.

After a little head-scratching as to his possible change in position someone suggests that 'maybe everything else moved'.

'Hmm, possibly. The minotaur could have pushed so hard that the whole world shifted, but I made my save.'

I hear a voice in my head: 'Please help me, I'm captive in the tower, the goblins are about to kill me.

But I'm not fooled, this is clearly a delusion created by a malicious entity. My own inner voices would never forget to close the quotation marks.

We move down the tunnel towards the drow city, from which the undead curiously emerged. The drider that saw us fight the undead reappears ahead of us. 'Hail, adventurers. What are surface dwellers doing here?'

There is some mumbling from the group members at point, 'maybe you want to talk to our intelligent member of the party', for there is only one, and Grimstorm steps forwards.

'Hail, drider. We are heading to the city, uh, flib flab flub, as I've forgotten the name of it.' Yes, he's the intelligent one. The GM sends a cue as an aside and Grimstorm remembers that the city is called Phaervhul. After we employ some diplomacy, the drider sends us warning that the city has been overrun by undead and that we would be wise not to go there.

Our mission doesn't really have any contingency for the drow city being under hostile occupation, and it is just as likely that whoever is controlling the undead is also the one planning to send an army to attack the dwarf city, so our plan remains to continue to Phaervhul, whatever we are going to encounter. We thank the drider for his information and bid our new potential ally farewell as we press on.

The drow city turns out to be only a couple of minutes away, and we cross the large bridge in to Phaervhul easily enough. There are no drow around but there are signs of destruction and fire, suggesting there is more than simple negotiation awaiting us. We move further in to the city to investigate when we are spotted by goblins, of all creatures, on the top of a building's wall.

The goblins summon a troll, who then calls out to us in common. 'Creatures!', he begins, as we catch sound of some bongo drumming coming from inside the troll's building. It is really quite atmospheric to have live sound effects, adding to the ambience of the evening, but they really don't sound much like bongos. 'That's my 'phone', says the DM, breaking from the troll character, 'hang on a sec.'

After the interruption we learn that the troll and goblins are celebrating their recent release as slaves of the drow, owing to the undead attack on the city, and they would like us to join their party. Thinking they are inviting us for drinks and some dancing we head in, the troll welcoming us happily. 'Great to see you!' he calls out.

'No one ever says that!' says Adran.

'That's because he wasn't talking to you,' Krafft tells him.

The troll extends his greeting, 'we ran out of drow to cook on the fire, so it is good timing for you to wander past. We could use more nibbles.'

'Oh. Maybe he was talking to you, Adran.'

My new mage has the French-derived name Bijou. With no introductions, I get a whisper from a gnome asking 'where are you from?'

I'm a Draenei and on an RP server, so I reply 'from outer space, our ship crash-landed here'.

The gnome doesn't talk to me again.

Running away from the continuing danger of the unslain Aboleth we make it close to the drow city, a glyph on the ground in front of one of a pair of tunnels attracting our attention. Also attracting our attention are the wights and ghoul skittering down the tunnel bearing the glyph, as well as the wonderfully clumsy drow rogue falling off a ledge behind us, in a less-than-stealthy manner. Another drow appears from the other tunnel, along with a drider. It looks like we have a fight on our hands.

Although the undead monsters attack us directly the drow keep their distance, which suits us just fine. we drop a sunrod and engage the wights and ghoul. It isn't long before Gruknal is immobilised, which doesn't bother him too much because of his marking and tanking abilities, but it provides a decent target for the undead. 'Hello, you're an immobilised dwarf', says one of the wights, 'I'm going to sink my fangs in to you.' It seems they were once toffs, maybe we simply need to knock their monocles off to gain an advantage.

I take advantage of all three undead lined up nicely to unleash my powerful blast ability, neatly damaging all of them. Oh, what's this? It seems the new implement scavenged from a previous fight has sent a beam of black energy to the ghoul, dominating it. I send my new pet ghoul to the far wall and order it to sit down, allowing us to concentrate on killing the wights first. One wight gets hit by a massive blow from Adran, but Grimstorm claims that 'it was my damage that killed it, I took the hit points off the bottom.'

The second wight falls soon, as it is our only remaining opponent with the drow holding their ground, and I have a better idea for my ghoul. The ghoul moves to attack Adran, as I claim 'Oh no, I have lost control of the ghoul, it's on a killing spree!' This is a time I ought to have kept my mouth shut, as my pitiful bluff check fools no one and I have then to pretend that it was just a jape after all. However, getting the ghoul to stand up gives us a plan.

The dominated ghoul starts running laps around our stationary group, provoking as many opportunity attacks as possible, adding to the attacks that everyone can normally make during their action. Our dwarf is feeling a bit left out, still being immobilised, so I move my badger self over to him and give him a push to get him in to range of the galavanting ghoul. My pet ghoul shakes off the domination effect after a while, but all the attacks he received whilst under the effects took their toll and he drops soon after regaining its senses.

And with that, the drow and drider move away down the tunnel, leaving us to rest, and to wonder what their intentions were. Our guide informs us that the glyph points the way to the drow city, causing further intrigue as to what undead are doing coming from the city and why the drow and drider head away from it.

'These don't look like the goblins you've already fought.'

'Is that because the ones we've already fought are dead and these are alive?'

We are deep underground being led towards a drow city in almost complete darkness, minimal light sources allowed lest we attract attention from whatever lurks in the caverns and corridors, our hired guide using his experience and heightened senses to keep us on track. But he can be quite a capricious fellow. One minute the guide is telling us to row across an underground lake quickly and quietly, the next he wants us to push away from the far shore and float gently out to the middle of the lake. And then throw our oars overboard.

I've heard about brain slugs, so before we get too far away from shore I perform some quick phrenology and find tentacles thrust in to the guide's head. I raise the alert and Gruknal starts pushing back towards shore, Grimstorm grabs a small light source, and Adran swings his ceremonial swords around. Adran's actions are less an uncharacteristic display of heroism and more a satisfying show of self-preservation, as he bought some ointment from the guide that, when smeared on the eyes, gains a person darkvision for a short period.

At the first sign of trouble Adran wants to escape and smears the paste on his eyes, which brings in to view a Slime Mage Aboleth, a creature so specialised that the GM doesn't mind showing us its name. Unfortunately for Adran, the slime mage throws slime everywhere, immobilising half the party, and he has the task of holding the aboleth at bay until we all recover and can flee to a tunnel.

Although Adran can see quite clearly, the rest of us are in a spot of bother. We have some dim light that Grimstorm is providing but it doesn't project quite far enough to light up the monster, and we don't want to attract any more attention by dropping a sunrod. Gruknal frees himself from the slime and moves to defend the rest of us, relying on Adran to be told where to stand and attack.

It's not long before the slime dissipates enough for all of us to either move freely or get dragged along by someone who can, and we head towards a tunnel entrance, one narrow enough that the aboleth won't be able to follow us through. Myself, Grimstorm and the guide get there first, Krafft following passively behind, before Gruknal catches us up. Then we hear a sickening gurgle just before Adran rejoins us, somewhat elated.

'I did it! In one amazing blow, using up a couple of daily powers and my best abilities, I cut the aboleth in twain. I did well over 80 damage in a single hit!'

'That's quite impressive, but it's a little peculiar how you are always most effective when no one else can see you.'

'But I did! The beast is dead!'

'Very good. But let us move swiftly down this passage before it catches up with us.' Sadly, it looks like no bards will be singing of Adrans heroics yet again.

We use the portal in the city to transport ourselves to, um, some dwarven outpost it seems. Being under the impression that we would find ourselves in the Seven Pillared Hall of Thunderspire Labyrinth it's a little disappointing to have to journey for a couple of days as part of a caravan, underground. At least we don't need to act as guards for the caravan as it encounters random monsters on its path.

Upon reaching Thunderspire Labyrinth we soon settle in to an inn and deftly fend off nosy questions about our intentions in the area from so-called arbiters of justice. We are merely visitors, and not adventurers looking to gain entrance to a drow city to offer them an annual bribe not to attack a dwarf city. As few of us have been paying attention to the plot so far this ruse is quite easy to maintain.

Remembering how the system works, from a previous time some of us were in Thunderspire, we request an audience with one of the powerful mages who resides in the tower, who arrives fashionably late through a portal in front of a huge bronze minotaur statue. After a few pleasantries we are invited to an inn to discuss the possibility of private passage to the drow city.

'The mage enters the inn, gestures to the barman...'

'...who bursts in to flames, the mage making entirely the wrong gesture altogether.' Luckily, we have one of the smart mages and the gesture instead clears half the inn—by getting people to move, no disintegrations—for us to have a conversation with a modicum of privacy. The mage listens as we bluff our way through reasons for wanting to find the drow city, and we are pointed towards a local guide who has reportedly been to and from the drow city many times and can act as a guide.

With the name of the guide and knowledge of his habits we head off to find him. The mad old critter is quite easy to recognise. 'Vadriar the Sage? We seek a guide to, uh, <what's the name of the city?>'

'Phaervhul', the GM responds helpfully.

'Ah, you already know of our venture! You are wise indeed. Then you will take us there?' A bit of bargaining ensues and we soon have a guide willing to take us to the drow city, although on some rather uneven terms.

'Why do I get a sense of dread and foreboding?' Adran wimpers.

'Because it's Thursday night and we're playing D&D, your pessimist nature is becoming dominant again.'

'Ah, right.' Never the less, as we're heading in to complete darkness following a gibbering madman towards what could be an amassed army out for dwarf blood, Adran's intuition may be right this time.

We are to investigate the drow general's claims of an army preparing to storm the city, which will require a trip to Thunderspire. Despite its distance we are assured swift travel to Thunderspire, the city council informing us that 'you may use our portal to transport you directly to Thunderspire.'

That's all well and good, but 'how do we get back?' Walking would be quite a chore.

'We have considered that as well—you can use these scrolls of recall we have crafted for just this purpose.'

'Ooh, scrolls of recall', says Krafft, quite enamoured with the idea of magical travel, 'how do these work?' he asks, unfurling one.

'They are spells already cast on to parchment, you merely need to complete the spell by reading the scroll.' As the elder finishes his words, the image of Krafft shimmers magnificently before immediately jumping ten feet to his left, closer to the centre of the hall. The scroll that was in his hand now crumbled to dust.

'That's brilliant! Do they both do that?'

Leaving the city council's audience Krafft is approached by a stranger urging his attention.

'I must speak to you, it is most important. There are grave matters afoot in the temple of the Raven Queen at the moment. With all the rumours and strange situations occurring the temple has also been affected, and some people think that it is neither coincidence nor idle gossip. I fear there is a possibility that the high priestess of the Raven Queen may be a doppelganger, like those already uncovered elsewhere and banished or killed. I have no proof of this yet, but when I return to the temple I shall investigate further and be sure to bring you any further news.'

''Further' news? Serf, I suggest that the next time you dare interrupt my afternoon you do not approach me with the promise of returning later with news, but wait until you have some in the first place.'

'Uh...'

'That will be all, serf.' Apparently, the module doesn't offer suggestions for responses when players recognise completely vacuous statements.