Slain by Elf

Delving further in to the cave system, hoping to find out more about the missing ships and where the crews and cargo are, we tread down some winding corridors, all of them at least a few inches deep with water. At the end of one corridor we find a couple of rooms, inside one of which are some undead monsters that threaten to dismember us. Our Cleric steps boldly in and calls upon the light of her god to turn them from her. Such is her power that three of the lesser undead turn to dust, and the remaining one begins to flee. Not really wanting it to come back when we least expect it, we give chase, but it finds its way down a narrow corridor and we cannot catch it up enough to stop it from staying ahead of us.

Our Conjurer comes up with an idea, and casts Web. This entangles the undead monster, and all he can do is try in vain to run away, but being entangled it remains stationary in the sticky strands of silk. It doesn't take long to kill it, removing its blight from the land. Once that has been achieved, we work out where we are going next, stuck with a web in front of us. The Conjurer helpfully lets us know that the web will last for around forty minutes, or we can burn our way through it with torches, but that perhaps it would be best to keep the web there to prevent anything from sneaking up to us whilst we go off to explore a different fork in the cave's corridor system. This last suggestion seems to make sense, so we head back and work our way down another fork. Not finding much there we come back to the webbed section of the corridor, and ponder once more what to do about it.

None of us wants to hang around for the spell to dissipate, and the Conjurer is still keen to burn the web, although we would have to light torches and burn each 5' section in turn. It's not much work though, so we start to get torches out of our backpacks to start the process. It's at this point, after a fair bit of faffing around, that the Conjurer suddenly remembers the arcane power he wields, and clicks his fingers to dispell the web instantly. Well, I suppose that's better than forgetting how to cast spells.

We have heard some rumours that a fishing town has had some disappearances and is in a spot of bother, so we make the couple of day journey there to offer our services. We learn that whole boats have gone missing, along with their crews, with only a little wreckage found. Along with that, the catches have been diminishing rapidly, to the point where the livelihood of the town is in peril. We offer our help to find out what is going on and are told we would be rewarded should we get to the bottom of the mystery and return life to normal.

We head on out on the road to a beach to the south where the few bits of wreckage have been spotted, to do some investigation work. Before we get there we are interrupted by a boar breaking through some tall grass. It was being chased by something, so we prepare ourselves for what is coming, and it is not long before we see breaking from the grass a strange-looking creature: it has the head of an owl and the body of a bear! Even though it was just chasing wildlife, the primitive recognition in its eyes saw more of a meal in us than the boar that was out of its reach, so we defended ourselves. A quick shot from the Ninja pricked at it, and the Fighter had a swing. Hitting something vital on the bear-owl with his two-handed weapon, he dropped the creature pretty much before it had taken two steps towards him. Bear-owls are perhaps not as threatening as we supposed from their looks.

The beach to the south was reached with no further disturbances, and we see some planks of wreckage that had been warped, and some dead fish. Following a trail of clues we are led to find mounds of more dead fish, more wreckage, and a dead sea creature. We soon find a cave that it must have been heading to before it collapsed, and we go in to investigate. We don't get far before three more of these sea creatures ambush us. But our Ninja is too quick, and with plenty of stabbing kills one of them, whilst the Fighter, flush with his earlier prowess, decides simply to swing his sword around, looking impressive but hitting nothing. The second drops once the Fighter stops showing off, but it is up to me to rip the heart out of the last one with my bare hands and show it to him before he dies. It wasn't the most peaceful of resolutions, but it was sort of diplomatic.

All in all, not one of us has suffered an injury yet. It looks like this adventure will go smoothly!

With the Half-Orc Fighter Grot Krayfish, Elrohir the Wild Elf Ninja, Gimp Stormglass, a Deep Halfling Conjurer, and Human Cleric Shaniqa Arisa is Lenwë Telemnar, an Elven Monk. Realising that most non-Elves, including the rather savage and uncultured Wild Elves, cannot get the inflections of the Elven tongue correct he is content to be known as 'Lenny' most of the time.

Lenwë is practiced with all forms of unarmed combat, although he sees his body as a temple of peace and solitude than a weapon. He is also a master of the quarterstaff, using it to disarm his opponents. The intention is to remove any threat so that a more peaceful solution can be found. Where this cannot be achieved, a more final solution is exacted, one that removes the threat from Lenwë once and for all.

Having got to know the rest of his colleagues through one association or another, Lenwë is happy to continue travelling with them, letting life lead him on to adventure and reflection.

It wasn't looking good. Bang, our Mage, had sent his brother to block the corridor on his own, as myself and the Paladin were trying to kill a Vrock. The Rogue then got surrounded by evil Clerics of Orcus, held by Hold Person, and set up for several Coup de Grace attacks. We then spent the next few seconds trying to ensure his survival, by blinding some of the Clerics with the Paladin's shield and the Mage sending his weasel in to cast invisibility on his brother. Spending these seconds looking after one meant neglecting the rest of us to some extent, but our sense of duty meant we had no other choice. It looked like poor old Fizz was a goner.

Who could have forseen that the Clerics standing outside of their silenced area would Hold me too, and then, just as I am shrugging off the effects of the Hold Person, mere seconds after being affected by two of those spells, a Cleric minion steps forwards and delivers a Coup de Grace of my very own. And even though a mace does not do much damage, even on a critical hit, the shock to my system was too much. I fell, the life force drained from me.

I was not around to see our Rogue take two Coup de Grace attacks and shrug off the damage and the shock, still standing, albeit still Held, until the third Coup de Grace killed him. Mind you, as he was still invisible during this time I wouldn't have seen much. I would only have seen brave Sir Paladin turning tail to run, although, to his credit, he stopped to pick up our own Cleric's slumped and bleeding body. Maybe that's enough to keep his Paladin abilities.

It looks like the Paladin, Mage and Cleric will be spending a fair bit of time trying to find some way to pay for the resurrection of myself and Fizz.

Our Rogue, when hearing that there may be a large monster in this room of cultists, sneaks in to the room, past the Obscuring Mist that we have cast, and tries to spot this beast. He spies something big and scary, a cross between a vulture and a human. However, with its keen senses it also hears him coming. The Vrock flies close to him and swings in the general area of our Rogue, getting one nasty hit in before the Rogue manages to get back out of the room. By this time I have decided that we are perhaps not as prepared as we ought to be for this fight and have ordered the retreat, for now. Unfortunately, it appears that the Vrock can teleport, which it does, past the Obscuring Mist and in to the corridor, hoping to cut off the Rogue, which it also does. Unfortunately, we now have the Rogue, Paladin and Mage in the corridor and with the Cleric and I in the dormitory, with the Vrock in-between.

The Mage, our Rogue's brother, is happy to see that the Rogue is brave enough to move forwards and hold off the oncoming cultists, who are starting to appear through the Mist, whilst the Paladin and I try to defeat the Vrock quickly. However, the Vrock teleports away again when it is in danger of dying, and the Rogue quickly finds himself surrounded by five cultists, with more behind them, Silence cast in the area, and a successful Hold Person cast on him making him helpless. He looks to be facing several coup de grace actions, albeit selflessly saving his brother in the process.

By the way, guess which player didn't turn up for this session?

Faced with these cultists wearing black robes, standing in front of what looks to be a sacrificial altar above a pit of lava, in a room behind a pair of doors with demonic figures carved in to it, our Paladin wonders if he should cast Protection From Evil.

'Are these evil?', he asks.

We first take stock of our position and find that after the previous skirmishes with the Ogres and undead we have most of our health and, apart from large area-of-effect spells like Fireball and Lightning Bolt, most of our spells to hand. The Paladin decides that we are healthy enough to move on, not needing a rest. Excellent! Onwards.

We pass on from the small dormitory in to a short corridor, at the end of which is an ornate pair of doors, picturing demonic figures in some detail. Opening the doors we are faced with around two-dozen cultists, plus what looks like their leader, all apparently expecting us. We stand our ground in the corridor, hoping they will come to us to make it harder for them to completely surround us, and they do indeed come for us. This groups them nicely together, just right for a Lightning Bolt or Fireball to even the numbers a bit. Ah well, I guess we'll just have to make do with casting a few Create Water spells. That should slow them down.

I was in a class raid on Stratholme, in the Scarlet Crusade part of town. Our raid party had infiltrated the base of the Scarlet Crusade and were heading in to defeat their leader. The cramped fighting conditions made battle a little awkward at times, and one had to be careful about stepping in to a room, lest the suspicions of nearby patrols were raised.

Unfortunately, our priest turned the wrong way when entering a room and ran head-long in to a patrol. Being a squishy cloth-armour wearer she was quickly despatched. Luckily, having a warlock like myself in the party meant that, being a priest and thus being able to revive everyone but herself, I had protected her with a soulstone, which captures the soul of someone allowing her to resurrect within a short amount of time.

It all worked to plan. The priest released her soul and was alive once more, and, being an Elf, managed to shadowmeld so that she would not be noticed. Sadly, her timing to come out of the shadowmeld was misjudged, as she ran right in to the returning patrol. If they were a little surprised to see her standing again it wasn't for long, and the priest's body crumpled to the floor once more, mere seconds after she had been killed before. Fear not, for we had an engineer in the party with some Goblin Jumper Cables, giving a slight chance of resuscitating someone back to life. The engineer checked that the coast was clear and gave them a go. To everyone's surprise they worked! The priest jumped back up again, but didn't expect to be facing the way she was, and ran in to the patrol again. You'd think they'd be bored of killing her by that point, but it didn't seem to matter. Down she went.

By this point, the Paladin in the party was about to resurrect our poor, beaten up priest. I was hiding around the corner for most of this, so don't know where the Paladin was before then, but she was able to revive the priest safely and draw her back away from the patrol before they noticed again. Once the rest of the party was ready, we exacted some vengeance on that patrol, and headed on to defeat their lord and master.

Still, three deaths in as many minutes without causing a total party kill was impressive, particularly with three different ways of being revived. I don't think I'll see that again any time soon.

Defeating the evil (yes, evil) tendril-palmed undead and moving on, we find ourselves weaving back to the water-filled corridor, albeit from the other side and thus now with access to what we bypassed before in fear of getting the Paladin's feet wet or drowning a Gnome. Following the carved corridor along, and passing through a debris-strewn room, we come across some sleeping quarters. There are six beds, and at the foot of each bed is a locker.

When hearing that there are foot lockers in the room, the Paladin, from the back of the party, blinks to the middle of the room, keen to see what the lockers may contain. Our Rogue, being cautious, checks the first locker for traps, just in case. He looks closely at the lock and opening mechanism and sees the tell-tale signs of a trap waiting to be set off, announcing to the rest of us this fact. Funnily enough, the Paladin was suddenly 30 feet back down the corridor leading in to the room. How does he do that?

We leave the dead Ogres behind and explore the many tunnels that lead off from the cavern. Only a few lead anywhere, so we pick a direction and off we go. We find a smaller cavern that has mounds of dung in it, and a couple more exits. Whilst picking a new direction we are all at risk of puking from the foul stench in there, but we are pretty much okay. The Paladin, however, doesn't feel too good when he walks in, and starts to retch. Being at the back of the party (where else?) he was the last to enter the cavern and the rest of us were on the way out, and as he stumbles a poo monster appears out of a piles of dung right next to the Paladin, catches him with its tentacles and drags his body closer to its gaping mouth.

It turns out to be a benign poo monster, merely asking us to feed it something, offering a gift if we decide to do so, rather than wanting to attack us. The poo monster puts the Paladin back down when the Mage asks, and we decide that we may as well feed it the dead Ogres we left behind. Still, what a disappointing encounter that started out so promising. The poo monster is happy with the dead Ogres we give it to eat and gives us a poo spear as a reward, which the immune-to-disease Paladin takes. It also tells us of some sinister humans in black robes nearby, so we head off to investigate them.

We wander down the small tunnel in the direction these people are supposed to be, ending up with the Gnomes walking and the rest of us crawling, such were the dimensions of the tunnel. It opens up in to another cavern, where our Rogue spots a humanoid, maybe two, wandering around. When we encounter them proper we find they have a strange attack, whereby tendrils shoot quite a distance from their hands that try to attach themselves to their victims with barbs. I found this out quite quickly, as well as how strong these humanoids were, with one tendril stuck in me and nearly being pulled off my feet towards the monsters that snared me.

Our Mage catches sight of them and rummages through his memory to see if he knows anything about them. Whilst he has never encountered them personally before, he seems to recall reading somewhere that they are undead that used to be humans but made a pact with a dark lord, probably Orcus, who gave them dark powers in return for their souls.

Our Paladin, sharp as ever, asks 'Are they evil?'

At least the Mage didn't recall, after one snared me, that they are known to have barbed tendrils that shoot out of their hands. He's too smart to do that sort of thing.