Slain by Elf

'What was he doing hiding in the cupboard? He must be the most cowardly cultist in the dungeon!'

'That's only because you're not a cultist.'

Today is a sad day indeed. We lost an adventuring friend, one who helped us through many fights, and eased our pain from traps and pitfalls. It's difficult to describe how we all felt, this far from a friendly settlement, when we realised what was about to happen. It was inevitable, yet it came so soon. Yes, we ran out of charges on our wand of Cure Light Wounds.

Some of us, like Wendel, who seemed to depend on the wand more than others, were obviously in denial about this. 'Maybe it sill has some extra charges on it. Maybe we bought a special one, or we lost track of the number of charges we used. Try it out! It's got to be worth a try.' He was shaking a little as he said this.

Scintilla wasn't convinced that the wand was special enough to have more than 50 charges when new, and was a little insulted when it was implied she couldn't keep count. Nevertheless, she took his advice. Grasping the wand firmly, Scintilla attempts to cast Cure Light Wounds on Wendel.

'Hey', complains Wendel, 'either stop hitting me over the head with the wand, or start saying its activation command word.'

Adventuring deeper in to the cave system, past a curious wall that lets only those wearing certain rings pass, becomes hazardous when we realise that the cultist lair is seemingly filled with cultists. We provoke a battle here, a combat there, a skirmish up the corridor. It's funny, but I always thought that cultists are looking to recruit most of the time, not trying to kill them, particularly those who turn up at their doorstep. But then who can understand the brainwashed mind of a cutlist?

With all these fights we were taking enough damage to be draining our wand of Cure Light Wounds to dangerously low levels. Every charge became precious, particularly when it only cured two hit points per use. Oh sure, it could potentially heal up to four times that amount, but that is the stuff of legends.

Pushing through another door, we are confronted by some cultist warriors. My new Blizzard spell, doing damage over a fair-sized area for a short period of time, works wonders at stopping them from charging in to melee, and allows us to form front and rear ranks. It also lets them retreat and draw their bows. And call for reinforcements. Yes, Blizzard works a treat. It's not long, however, before we have closed with and start cutting down our foes. Despite their numbers, the combat is relatively brief.

We stop to treat the wounds of our front line fighters, wondering how much longer the curing wand will last us. Seeing how wounded our fighters are, our priest, Scintilla, says in a resigned tone, 'I'll waste another charge on the wand'.

'Why, are you casting it on Wendel?'

Wendel then had to be reminded that hitting a party member would just end up using more charges of the precious wand.

Further exploring a cave system in the Blasted Lands, looking for a victim of a kidnapping, our party climbs up an inclined corridor that ends in a closed door. Our Rogue decides that caution is the better part of valour, and urges us to stop so that he can listen at the door. 'I can hear some sort of regular, scraping sound on the other side', he advises us in a hushed tone.

'It could be someone sharpening a blade', another party member suggests, before another whispers 'have you checked the door for traps?'

'Naw, there's no time. I say we rush in to gain the upper-hand through surprise!' And with that, he quickly turns the handle of the door. Before the door opens more than a fraction, a dart shoots out from somewhere hidden and sticks in to his body. With the mechanism's noise, and Wendel's yelp of pain, the orc behind the door notices something is amiss. He jumps up from sharpening his weapon and gets ready for an attack. Well, so much for surprise.

Even without surprise, our attack on the brute starts off relatively well. Until he calls for reinforcements, at which point I decide to retreat from the room, guessing that his allies will appear from the door opposite the entrance. I then cast an illusion that I hope will confuse them just long enough for us to get the jump on them when they appear.

It doesn't quite work as planned, as the reinforcements come from behind us, from the direction we had approached the room ourselves. This places me in a direct line between them and the rest of the party, and no doubt first to be attacked. Being but a squishy elf in no armour, I had to reposition myself again, this time casting another defensive spell, hopefully to protect myself and gain a better position. Without my area-of-effect spell, which was lost when I was killed and raised, I stood little chance of surviving against multiple fighters.

Meanwhile, the orc brute we had disturbed was taking a rough beating from our front-line fighters, Metrius the multi-classed and Wendel the Rogue-Warrior. Even after the first, savage hit from the orc, the fight was going better than expected. Of course, that was before his allies appear, bringing the fight to a second front. Some focussed fire brings down the main orc, and then some nifty footwork gets the fighters to bear on the reinforcements.

It is quite a bloody battle, with Wendel and Metrius being knocked out at least once, and Wendel several times drops to the floor. Scintilla the priest does a great job in keeping them alive, even if it is impossible to keep them standing against such odds, and we eventually survive the fight, shooting the fleeing spellcaster in the back to kill the last of the enemies.

With this big battle over, our resources are much depleted, particularly the spells of myself and Scintilla. We decide to rest in the orc's room. It is an uneventful period, and we restart our explorations after recovering our spell slots once more. 'Which way shall we venture back down the corridor?', asks Wendel.

'Why don't we go through the other door?', we ask.

'What door?' The door opposite the entrance to the orc's chamber is pointed out to our ever-observant rogue. 'Oh, I never noticed that.'

On hearing this, the priest sighs 'I'm glad nothing came along during his watch'.

She made a good point, 'but' I enquire, 'how would we have known?'

After checking to make sure no leprechauns had made off with any of our equipment whilst the rogue was on watch, and with the mystery of the suddenly-appearing door solved, we continue with our exploration.

'You are in a 30-foot square circular cave entrance.'

'I don't care about being Chilled any more.'--Wendel Chunderstout

The adventuring party, less an unstable gnome but now with an unstable high-elf mage, is looking in to a kidnapping of the daughter of a noble, which the noble wants to keep quiet. We are nothing if not low profile, and have hardly spread the word in each tavern and Thieves Guild we have wandered in to and inadvertantly started bar fights in. On top of that, progress has been made, finding the likely culprit and discovering that he did do it, but not with malice, and then it went wrong and the daughter ended up being kidnapped for real. So much for making some easy money, we actually have to rescue her.

Travelling to the kidnappers' den, in the not-so-friendly Blasted Lands, we are awoken one night by a young girl wandering near our camp, clutching a severed human leg, complete with leather boot on its foot.

'This doesn't feel right', intones Wendel, our Dwarven chum, not missing a clue as usual, however subtle it may be.

Coming up behind the girl is a small band of men, claiming that the child is actually a demon. We dispute this, using all our points put in to the not-believing-random-killers skill, and a fight ensues before we have had time to don armour. The girl cowers whilst we fight off her pursuers, and Metrius, the other Dwarf in the party, assumes that this is because she didn't take the Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Severed Leg feat, and didn't want the -4 to hit penalty, which seemed a fair assumption.

The fight was short, and ended up with what remained of our foes kindly heading off to Ironforge to grab a six-pack of beers for us, thanks to a Suggestion spell, whilst we argued about severed legs and soon skittered off in the opposite direction. The girl led us to her home, where we found the owner of the severed leg, a friend of the family, and a couple more bandits torturing said friend of the family. Another quick ruckus, and the friend was rescued and the bandits were spilling their guts, one literally and the other figuratively.

It turned out that this friend of the family was a goblin trader, and the two bandits who hadn't chased the girls were trying to get the command words to all the magic gear they were stealing from him. He was so grateful at his rescue and the safe return of the child that he gave us an on-the-spot 10% discount on all of his many assorted items for sale. Wendel enquired about a magical dwarven waraxe, which, to everyone's surprise, the goblin had in stock.

'Ah, excellent! How much for the magical dwarven waraxe, my goblin chum?', asks Wendel, so excited to have finally found one that the magic weapon section of the DM's Guide slipped his mind.

'With the discount, let's say a nice round 2,000 gold pieces', replies the trader.

Wendel checks his money pouch, and his pockets, and his backpack. 'Hmm, I'm not sure I have quite that amount'.

'How short are you?, Scintilla enquires, ever one to help.

'Well, I am a dwarf', says Wendel. Nevertheless, Scintilla lent him the money, and Wendel is now the proud owner of a magical dwarven waraxe at last. The adventure continues.

Morbent Fel, the necromancer, after repeating his threat that the party will die at the hands of his undead army, vanishes from sight. Faced with a dominated ally and a room full of zombies, the disappearance of their current nemesis is met with confusion and consternation. 'He could have cast Teleport, or Dimension Door, or anything!', cries Samael, the gnome warlock.

Comes a stage whisper from Scintilla, the priest, 'You have Spellcraft, you can work it out'.

Samael's player rolls a 2 on his Spellcraft check, getting a pitifully low and, frankly, embarrassing result. ''He could have cast Teleport, or Dimension Door, or anything!', he repeats.

'He cast Invisibility', Scintilla sighs.

With that, Samael shows that what he lacks in brains he also lacks in subtlety, and draws his Blunderbuss. 'Why pick a square when you have a 20' cone of automatic hit at your disposal!?' comes his battle cry, and if anyone had the capability of seeing invisible creatures at that time they would have seen the look of surprise and frustration of being killed by a gnome pass across Morbent Fel's face as his shredded body slumped to the floor.

Poor man. No one deserved that, not even an evil necromancer hell bent on destroying the world.

The climactic battle is heating up. The evil necromancer Morbent Fel has retreated, planting himself firmly in a room that is crawling with mutated zombies. Metrius, excelling in melee combat, has been dominated and is swinging his weapon at Wendel, a rogue also good at hand-to-hand combat. Wendel is trying to work out how to get away from the dominated dwarf, as he is proving tricky to deal with and, despite previous 'accidents', shouldn't really be harmed.

'Why don't you withdraw all the way to the Morbent Fel? You can get within five feet of him', comes a suggestion from the party, noting that this would stop Metrius from getting an attack of opportunity against him.

'Sure, and while I'm at it why don't I just step through a portal to Hell so that I can avoid this rather humid room?' comes the perhaps a little sarcastic reply.

The brave band of adventurers have delved in to the uncovered depths beneath a graveyard, searching for the powerful necromancer Morbent Fel. After some dangerous encounters with the undead denizens in the area they enter a large set of rooms with metal grates in the floor. Beneath the grates hold more, powerfully-mutated undead. Thinking that there may be a master switch to release all the grates, the adventurers use their skills and equipment to tie as many of them shut as they see prudent.

Not long afterwards, Morbent Fel is found. As they approach, he does what any evil mastermind does: he monologues. Our heroes have other plans, though, and it takes some quick, or a lack of, thinking to distract him so that they can expose his weakness.

The necromancer starts his monologue, 'Fools! All you have done is enter my lair, brought yourself to me for your own destruction. Even now, my undead army is ready to be unleashed!'

'We've tied it to the floor!', butts in Metrius.

'... Uh...'

And in the confusion, initiative is rolled.