The Campaign With No Name - March 30th

The party reach the black octahedron in the middle of the lake and disembark. The sides are stepped enabling them to reach the entrance half way up with ease. Rather than a doorway, there is just a perfect pitch-black hole cut into the stone - magical darkness that even the Drow cannot see through. On entering, they find themselves in a well-lit corridor of sandy-coloured stone, with bright green vines growing through gaps between the bricks. The air is fresh and the plants lightly scented. A sense of health, wellbeing and relaxation penetrates the area.

As the Warlord starts to pull a brick from the wall to see what's behind it, the rest of the party wander down the corridor, only to hear an ominous thud behind them. A large stone boulder had dropped from the ceiling behind them and starts to roll slowly down the corridor towards them. Despite his best efforts, the Warlord fails to pull the stone he's working on out in time to jam it in the way,and he's flattened by the boulder. Only Chuck runs ahead to try and outpace the rolling stone; all the others are knocked down by its relentless movement. After picking themselves up, the Warlord simply continues his excavation of the wall and Mouse and the Drow investigate where the boulder came from, after failing to stop it with the Drow's spells. Chuck runs straight for the end of the corridor, just staying ahead of the rolling boulder and makes it through the door there before it crashes into the wall. The boulder then falls as the floor opens up underneath it, leaving a pit before the door on the corridor side.

On the other side is a dusty, grey, large room with an aura of solemnity and contemplation. A statue stands at one end and a large circular mosaic occupies much of the floor. As Chuck wanders forward to investigate it, the Warlord finally breaks through the wall he was working on and emerges in the same room Chuck is in. Only temporarily confused by the geometry of this place, the rest of the party take this route to avoid the gaping hole left by the boulder. They decipher the inscription on the statue and deduce that the mosaic is in fact a puzzle they need to solve to find a way out. They do this easily enough, and the whole completed picture suddenly starts to descend. Beneath appears to be icy cavern. The Warlord flies down -

- and finds himself flying up into a large ice cave, with several devils standing menacingly around. The rest of the party jump through, landing awkwardly near the hole in the floor, momentarily disorientated by the change of gravity's direction. A fight soon starts, and with some teleporting, some fire and a devil oscillating up and down through the hole for a while, the party are victorious. Above a ledge, embedded into the wall, is the stone tablet they were sent to look for. They gather around it.

The Campaign With No Name - March 2nd/9th

The long trek through the Underdark with the remaining Kua-Toa was coming to an end, and the party were asked to wait in a side-cave while the rest checked the way was clear. Suspecting a trap, the adventurers stood watchful, and sure enough, they were soon surrounded by Troglodytes when a false wall gave way. However, Chuck was able to hold several at a distance while the rest were butchered, and despite being outnumbered, the party triumphed. The Warlord even got to find out that Troglodytes don't taste any better alive than dead.

However, when the second-in-command of the Kua-Toa finally traipses back, clutching the translation stone and looking fairly miserable, it transpires it wasn't a set-up at all. The Kua-Toa were also attacked by Troglodytes and their leader and several others were killed. However,they finally beat off their attackers, and the remainder of the expeditionary party and the player characters set off for the Kua-Toa settlement. The ramshackle town is spread along the shores of a vast underground lake - almost a sea. The far side isn't visible, and a pyramidal-like structure pokes out in the distance. The characters are taken to the house of the new leader's aunt, and fed well. The Warlord is given lots of fish.

The following morning, they are led into a small "temple",hewn from rock right on the lake's edge. The main area is lined with guards, and they are told to stay back and not approach the "god". The guards then step back to reveal an alcove at the back, where an Aboleth Slime Mage emerges from underneath a large ornate cloak. The party are not impressed. The "god" communicates telepathically with a lot of crackling, images, vague impressions and broken Common. At first it demands a task from them, and expects them to join the ranks of it's worshippers. After that is met with polite derision by the party (and the Warlord entertains the idea of riding the Aboleth like a pony), it changes it's tune and instead offers them treasure in return for completing it's proposed quest. They are expected to go to the ziggurat in the lake, find and bring back a stone table, and hopefully while they are there, discover the "secret" of that place. Deliberately vague though the instructions are, the party decide to go explore the pyramid/ziggurat/whatever anyway, and then maybe come back if they feel like it.

The Kua-Toa leader is apparently annoyed about this, and warns them no-one ever comes back from the ziggurat. He then lends them a row boat to cross the lake. They are about two thirds of the way there, when they are suddenly attacked by a group of Kua-Toa wielding harpoons. Although they don't recognise any of those that attack them, they suspect they were sent by the town they just left. The harpooners repeatedly pull the Drow and Mouse into the water, but rarely manage to hold them there, while the few that climb onto (or are teleported into) the boat are dealt with by the Warlord. Despite the drawbacks of having to fight in water, the party still succeed in thwarting their attackers. They row on towards their destination, although the Drow does have to fight the Warlord to go back for Mouse who was briefly left in the water after the battle. As they approach the black obsidian structure, they realise that what at first seems like it's reflection is actually its continuation underwater - it is not a pyramid but an octahedron.

The Campaign With No Name - Feb 9th

As the Warlord and Drow had gone for a swim, Mouse and Chuck entertained themselves by sitting around on the stairs and then exploring the tower for anything they might have missed the first time. The other two had been gone some time, and they were carefully examining the mouldy remains of books in the library for anything still legible when they heard footsteps on the stairs - coming down from above.

Hiding behind the door, they waited until the footsteps stopped outside, the door swung open and....Dungeon Master walked into the room. He looked round and spotted them, and then, as if the incident where he was their captive until he escaped never happened, proceeded to tell them the Warlord and Drow had been captured by some Kua-Toa and would soon be executed. He then failed to dissuade them from mounting a rescue mission - his insistence that they should go and "get revenge" on the Magus instead was duly ignored as Chuck at least didn't quite trust him. Funny that.

With some difficulty, they managed to swim through the tight passageway and emerge gasping for breath in the flooded cavern. They followed the tunnel above ground to a T-junction and, with no clue as to which way the others might have gone, decided to left-hand map. Sneaking along, they soon spotted a couple of Kua-Toa carrying spears ahead, with what seemed to be the Warlord's in front, just disappearing round a corner. After debating whether to just attack or not, they decided to follow them for a bit.

Meanwhile, the Warlord and Drow had indeed met some Kua-Toa upon reaching the t-junction. As neither side immediately attacked, the Kua-Toa instead, jabbering in some language neither of the two characters understood, gestured for them to follow them. They pushed and poked and led the two down the tunnel to the right. While the Drow began to wonder whether the Kua-Toa thought they'd taken them prisoner, they emerged into a large cavern with several other of the fishy humanoids and were led to a crude tent. Inside they were given a possibly drugged drink and the Kua-Toa leader talked to them using a magic stone to translate into Common. Due to several misunderstandings, he concluded they were idiots obsessed with fish, but offered to take them to meet his god. They explained their other friends couldn't make it through the watery tunnel, and it was agreed that they would accompany the team sent to explore the last fork in the tunnel system to see if it led to the surface.

Sure enough, it did, albeit through a steep sink-hole that the Warlord was able to fly up through but would have been difficult to climb up. However, just as they were discussing going up to fetch Mouse and Chuck (and Cat of course) from the Bloodtower, those very persons spoke up from the shadows behind them and said "Hello!" Although they were annoyed that they'd had to swim when they didn't need to, the party were at least all together again, and happily not dead despite what Dungeon Master had said.

They accompanied the Kua-Toa group as they made their down to their home, travelling through the deep caverns for a couple of days. The Kua-Toa mostly stuck to side passageways once they got deeper, to avoid "trouble" they said, but one "awake period" the leader came to tell them that they needed to go on "the King's Highway" for a bit. It dawned on the party that they really were in the Underdark now. Despite the King's Highway's reputation as a treacherous path full of murderers, they had little trouble until one narrower part where, suddenly, chaos broke out and the party found themselves stuck between masses of fighting Kua-Toa, and facing a Blood Ooze.

The Ooze hurt badly, not least because it sprayed necrotic and poisonous blood everywhere whenever it was hit, and attempted to drain the blood from anything that stayed too close. But the party rapidly took it down, giving it little opportunity to hurt them. The Kua-Toa were less lucky.

The Campaign With No Name - Feb 2nd

After a restful night in the sleeping quarters of the Bloodtower, the party continued to explore the tower, heading down past the "ground" floor where they first entered. The next floor down consisted of a library and a dining room. A careful looting rewarded them with an antique map, scrolls of Consult Mystic Sages, Anthem of Unity and Detect Treasure, some residuum and several spiders. A collapsed staircase led directly to the flooded kitchen below which the Warlord investigated before deciding it would be easier for the non-winged party memebers if they all went down via the main staircase.

The stairs ended in waist deep swamp-water which filled a large hall with double doors on the outside wall of the tower, as well as a door through to the kitchen. On reaching the bottom of the stairs, they noticed several things begin to swim through the water towards them. The Warlord charged one (or at least waded towards one and poked it with his spear) and discovered they were ghouls. As the other adventurers were still making their way down the stairs, the ghouls quickly surrounded the Warlord and grabbed him, their claws digging in deep. The Drow splashed into the water and cast a large spell to push the ghouls away, then Chuck immobilised a couple of them while Mouse starting picking them off (with difficulty, as using a greatbow in deep water is not easy). A couple more came into the room from a corner, but a Storm Pillar helped deal with them. The fight was short, but still hurt a little.

After deciding there was nothing worth looting on this floor, being mostly underwater, the Warlord found a narrow tunnel leading down and investigated it. It was a tight swim and he started running out of breath before managing to surface in a large rocky cavern dimly lit by phosphorescence. A large tunnel led straight down through the water, but another above water looked more inviting. He went back to persuade the others they should explore that way. The Drow followed him, struggling with the swim a little, but after one look at the cramped hole, Chuck and Mouse decided to stay behind as they were not good swimmers, and Cat was refusing to come down off the stairs altogether.

The Campaign With No Name - Jan 26th

The party are continuing their exploration of the Bloodtower on the Moors, and, after deciding not to sleep in the barracks they find,continue heading up the stairs. The next floor up was a much more opulent sleeping quarters, and a quick search found some gems and gold hidden beneath a precious bowl filled with expensive soap. Again, they decided not to take a group bath and spend the night there, and headed further up the tower.

The next level up had a locked iron door which the Warlord kicked down. The room was roughly semi-circular and contained lots of empty shelves and chests. A thorough search found a magic ring that had been missed by whoever had cleared out the room, and a secret door to the other half of the level. This room was bare apart from three circles of intricate runes and sigils inscribed in the floor. After some studying,Chuck deduced these were teleport circles and carefully made a note of the "co-ordinates" in order to be able to teleport back to here should the need arise. Then they went up the stairs to the last floor.

The stairs came out in the middle of the open plan room which contained only a sarcophagus and another teleport circle as its defining features. Apart from three skeletons, a boneclaw and a human woman dressed in black robes, that is. Obviously having been waiting for the adventurers to emerge, the skeletons were quick to attack: shrieking in such a manner that chilled the characters to their bone before moving in for the kill. The party reacted quickly, trying to damage them as best they could with the sounds of their horrible shrieks still ringing in their ears. The boneclaw moved to the top of the stairs where it could hit them with its huge claws whenever they moved or were distracted by attacking at range. On being hit, the human turned into a flock of ravens and flew to the other side of the room then later targeting the two spellcasters with her own magic. The Warlord was able to help slaughter the skeletons before going to take on the boneclaw: Chuck holding it in place for him. The party found the necromancer's spells to be quite damaging, even over a short time, and when Mouse swapped places with her, a spectral tendril emerged from the floor and caused the elf to fall, unconscious and with her life-force draining away.

The Warlord skewered the boneclaw and shouted at Mouse to get up, rousing her. Despite their best efforts they failed to be able to stop the necromancer fleeing to the teleport circle and, muttering the word "Ometh", disappearing. Quickly realising that it must be a short-range teleport, Chuck and the Drow deduced she must be just downstairs, so while Mouse got to her feet and raced downstairs with Cat, they went through the teleport circle themselves. The Warlord, unconcerned with chasing after fleeing enemies, shrugged his shoulders and investigated the sarcophagus. It contained the perfectly preserved body of the former leader of the group of necromancers that called the Bloodtower home. After careful prodding to make sure he really was dead, he searched the body and collected all the expensive jewellery he could find.

Meanwhile, as Mouse was clattering down the stairs, Chuck appeared next to the surprised mage in the teleport chamber, and blasted her out of the room. The Drow then appeared and also blasted her. She hit back at the Drow and Mouse who had just emerged from the stairwell, both of whom promptly collapsed. As she made a beeline for one of the other teleport circles, Chuck tried desperately to stop her while also feeding the Drow a healing potion. The fight then became an undignified bout of pushing, both magically and bodily as they scrapped over who got to stand on the wanted teleport circle. The Drow helped, while also going to get Mouse up, but got dropped again. The necromancer got onto the circle but paused to try and find a piece of paper, giving Chuck time to push her off and then trap her with a wall of fire. The desperate woman stepped into the wall of flames in an effort to escape but died before she could utter the keyword. Unfortunately, the paper she carried was burnt to a cinder.

Shortly after this,the Warlord made his way down to help patch them all up, and they decided to head down to the bedroooms and sleep before exploring the underground portion of the tower.

The Campaign With No Name - Jan 19th

The party approached the half-sunken Bloodtower across dense marshland; the Warlord flew to avoid getting his boots dirty. From his higher vantage point he noticed something lying in the swamp waters ahead of them. A hydra emerged and was quickly held in place by Chuck,charged by the Warlord, peppered with arrows by Mouse and blatted with yet more damage by the Drow. Somehow it survived the initial assault, and attempted to bite the Warlord, and later, Cat and the Drow, but didn't pose much of a threat. Once slain, the Warlord proposed skinning it so they could disguise themselves as a Hydra. No-one else seemed too keen on that idea, so it was put on hold.

They decided to enter the Bloodtower via a gash in the wall rather than try to get to the window half-way up. The stench emanating from the hole warned them that a ghoul was in the area, so Chuck cast Thunderwave into it to clear the immediate area and cautiously stepped inside. As it was pitch black apart from dim light from the glowstone, Chuck also cast Light on a nearby stone slab which lit up the wretched stench ghoul hiding just behind it. The party crowded near the entrance and tried to stay away from the foul-smelling undead, again peppering it with damage from range until it ran in close. Once bloodied, it attempted to flee to a door at the far side of the room, but was pushed back and killed. The door then opened, and a skull lord cast a deathly ray onto the Warlord. A horde of zombies then attempted to enter the room, but the Warlord was ready with his spear and skewered each of them as it came close to him. Unfortunately, they then each exploded, showering the Warlord, the Drow and Cat with necrotic energy. But once they were all dead, the skull lord was easily dealt with. While he attempted to hide in the darkness of the other room, Mouse was still able to pinpoint his position accurately enough to destroy his last skull.

After a brief rest, the party decided to ascend the central staircase, ignoring the way down for now as they had no idea how many floors may be below ground. On the next level up they found an alter to an ancient exarch of death named Ometh, which they didn't desecrate just in case. There was little else on the floor, indicating that most of the furniture and any valuables had been taken a long time ago. Another floor up led them to two dormitories - the beds intact but no personal possessions in sight.

The Campaign With No Name - Jan 12th

Having dealt with time-travelling undead ogres, the party headed south to the Bloodtower, politely ignoring the Warlord's suggestion that they institute a "scorched earth" policy.

While most of the journey was uneventful, as they were passing through a wooded area Mouse spotted several figures lying in ambush ahead and called a halt. The Warlord immediately charged into the trees and flung a large Dragonspawn into the open for the others to attack. Several Dragonborn warriors and a mage emerged to fight them, but Chuck drew off most of them with an illusory pile of gold they were compelled to stay near. While the soldiers were bombarded with area attacks by the two arcanists, the martial characters dealt with the Dragonspawn and its friend, and the Dragonborn mage who found his fire spells ineffective against many of the party. Cat took the brunt of his attacks before retreating, with the wall of fire he threw up barely hurting the Drow at all. His attempts to flee were curtailed and the Warlord finished him off. The three remaining soldiers were easily dealt with, being still too attracted to the magical treasure to provide much of a fight.

Chuck found the mage's gloves to be of great interest - increasing the range of teleportation effects on others as well as providing an additional repulsion effect. The party pressed onwards.

OOC notes: The first was actually quite long and felt like it dragged a bit, but the players at least dealt with the not-particularly-a-threat effectively. For easing us back into gaming after the break it did well enough.

The Campaign With No Name - Dec 15th

The party continued exploring the Small Dungeon of Koptilla and found one more chamber. Past an ugly statue of some rock-like monster, there was a large column of crackling blue energy flanked by two Blaspheme Imperfects. A small secondary chamber could just be seen at the back, with some sort of glowing symbol on the wall.

The party decided to mostly stay outside. Chuck tried to keep the blaspheme away from them and Mouse and the Drow started damaging them heftily. A large undead ogre emerged from the secondary chamber and teleported the Warlord towards him. After destroying one of the blasphemes, only to have it reappear from the energy column, the party realised they needed to shut that down. Chuck ascertained it was pure necrotic energy, and the Warlord made his way to the back to investigate the thing on the wall. It was a tile, the symbol of Ogremoch glowing with necrotic energy on it. The Warlord wrenched it from the wall before he was drawn back into the fight. The fight was turning into a long one, as the blaspheme regenerated (but rarely got to do any damage) while the ogre swept everyone to the floor with his flail (including himself on one memorable occasion, thanks to the Drow's Chaos Link spell). Eventually, Chuck got to examine the tile and concluded it was the key that was generating the column of necrotic power and, hoping that it wouldn't just explode, flung it into the swirling mass of energy.

It imploded, drawing sparks of blue energy from the ogre and the remaining blaspheme. The two undead then continued to "leak" energy and could only move very slowly, ensuring the party were able to finish them off. A careful search of the chamber turned up a magical silver headband that could attack opponents with merely a thought. Exhausted and depleted of resources, the party decided to rest there.

The Campaign With No Name - Dec 8th

The party journeyed south to the Catacombs of Koptila - all that remains of an ogre culture that is alleged to have journeyed through time to escape attacks from aberrant creatures, and destroyed the town that had built up in their absence on their return.

In the first chamber, they are confronted by three well armed ogres and their pet Scythclaw Drakes. Acting quickly, Chuck teleported two of the ogres and one drake into a corner of the room and trapped them with a wall of fire. This allowed them to concentrate their attacks on the remaining ogre before the others could charge through the fire to attack. Although the ogres hit the Warlord a couple of times, and the drakes knocked several of the party to the floor, the monsters proved little trouble as they were repeated pushed back into the fire until they perished. While resting afterwards, they inspected the bodies and found each ogre wore a silver bracelet engraved with markings associated with the Earth Primordial Ogremoch.

Moving through the iron doors they followed a short corridor to another open room with a short staircase at the far side. Inside was another ogre, covered in markings implying he was a thrall for an Ogremoch cult, and two hill giants. Although Chuck tried to keep the giants away from the party, they could still do some hefty damage by rolling boulders with large amounts of side or back spin at them. Eventually the three large humanoids were trapped on the stairs, hemmed in by each other and a flaming sphere and taking damage from Mouse's arrows, the Warlord's charges and the Drow's spells. Although the Warlord had to pause to heal himself part way through, the battle was as one-sided as ever. Again on examining the bodies, they discovered the ogre was wearing a silver bracelet. A passageway at the top of the stairs led further in to the apparently badly named "Catacombs"....

The Campaign With No Name - Dec 1st

After dealing with the vampires, the party returned to the inn to demand free food, booze and praise for liberating the townspeople. That night, most of the party wake up the sound of someone exclaiming "Yes!" quietly and then teleporting away, while the Warlord, whose grip Dungeon Master had just snatched his staff back from, slept on soundly.

In the morning, with no idea where to start hunting down the fugitive DM, the party examined their map again and decided to head out to Mad Maldek's Tomb and from there to the Catacombs of Koptila, and circle round back to the coast, visiting the points of interest on the way and hopefully collecting a lot of Treasure/Undead Tax.

They arrive at the tomb and head down some stairs to the small entranceway whereupon they discover a couple of large stitched together corpses guarding the doorway. They attack and manage to pin in the cadaver golems and destroy them without taking too much damage. Heading through the doors, they come to a large space set out as a very messy laboratory of some sort. Along with another golem, there are four putrescent zombies, a skeleton wielding what appears to be a spine, and a floating jar containing a brain preserved in some sort of liquid. As the fight starts, the skeleton turns out to be quite deadly with its spine-flail, and most of the party concentrate on that while Chuck deals with the zombies easily. The floating brain-in-a-jar sends a sparkling ray of psychic energy towards Mouse and causes her to turn her bow and arrow on the Drow causing him quite a lot of damage before she is finally able to shake the effect off. The Warlord charges the brain and hits, only to find himself teleported back across the room. But despite these set-backs, the heroes prevail as always, and find a pair of magic boots and a large sapphire to take as loot. Chuck also investigates the scattered notes and concludes that while the now definitely dead Maldek was indeed quite mad, he had made progress on the creation of golems from cadavers as well as preserving his brain after his body had begun to fail. The appropriate papers are taken, in case they are of further use.

The Campaign With No Name - Nov 3rd

The party paused only briefly before following the mist-form vampire lord through the doors to the innermost chamber. There, they were taunted by what appeared to be a corpse on a throne, which exploded as soon as it was attacked. They were attacked by some battle wights and a human figure at the back of the room cast spells and raised vampire minions which were shot to pieces or died on the end of the Warlord's spear. The vampire lord just lurked in a corner.

As they were fairly worn out from the previous battle, it took them longer than expected to deal with the wights and the necromancer, and suffered quite a bit of damage but had just enough healing to keep going. Once they finished with those, they turned their attention back to the vampire who remained in mist form and tried to bargain with them before (foolishly) turning solid again and throwing himself on their mercy. They quickly ended his (un)life.

OC comments - After quite a break we decided to play D&D again. It ended early because I was getting tired though, and as they were out of dailies/encounter powers the fight was beginning to drag.

Quote of the session
C: "Unfortunately for him, my spear's name is Mercy."

The Campaign With No Name - Oct 6th

After defeating the vampires that interrupted their drinking, the party had a good night's sleep. The following morning, they talked to the innkeeper who informed them the vampires were believed to have a lair in an old tomb in the very centre of the forest. After a long, wet, walk, the party found the stone stairs down into the tomb and entered.

Inside were several townspeople who seemed to worship "the master" and attacked them, despite the Warlord's efforts to get them to worship him instead. The cultists were easily dealt with, but the three snake constructs that guarded the corridor leading to the main chamber of the tomb provided more of a problem. Eventually, the Warlord had to actually get down from the steps and engage in the fight, rather than leave everything to the others.

The next room was a large one, containing two towering zombie hulks and several vampires. Chuck immediately divided the room in two with a Wall of Fire, so they only had to deal with a few vampires and one zombie to start with. The vampires were once again easily dispatched, and the zombie destroyed by being pushed into the wall of fire. However, once the wall was dropped, they discovered the zombie could get up again...This time, the two zombies caused some problems as they could hit quite hard, while the vampire minions were still mostly ineffectual. The vampire lord that they had defeated the previous night hung back until the zombies were nearly defeated, and then rushed forward and dominated the Warlord before charging at Chuck. The Drow was able to finish off the zombie and deal a large amount of damage to the vampire lord. The mind-controlled Warlord then charged him before being able to shake off the effect, and Chuck rushed toward him to help him recover from the aftereffects of the vampire being inside his head. The vampire lord took this opportunity to turn into mist and flee through another door, deeper into the tomb.....

The Campaign With No Name - Sept 22nd

Continuing the interrogations of their prisoners, the party managed to establish that the Magus was originally from their world, had no idea (or was deliberately vague about) how he got to this world, and was willing to give them anything they wanted in return for his freedom. His measured opinion on Dungeon Master was that he manipulated people into acting out stories for his own amusement. Mouse, confused by all this talk of other worlds, was given one of the Drow's leaflets on Dave, and once again began to doubt the sanity of her fellow adventurers. After an extensive intra-party debate, during which the Warlord proposed just killing both of them and never speaking of them again, they opted for Chuck's suggestion that they just let the Magus go as he was, at least to start with, as much a "victim" as they. The Magus left quickly, groveling and promising them any magic items they want if they come find him in his tower in Vek.

Moving back to DM, they admitted they had no proof that it was he who was pulling people from outside into this world, and despite some misgivings, decided to risk giving him the ring as Chuck didn't want it anyway (due to its tendency to implant thoughts about taking over the world). After spending five minutes "absorbing" it somehow - apparently turning it into the pure essence of magic - DM looked a lot healthier and was surprisingly compliant when they decided not to give him his staff back and to make him come with them for a while.

After checking that Charles was indeed no longer in the time trap and concluding that there was little point chasing after the chronomancers just yet, they decided to head back to their house to check on the progress of the repairs. The workmen had cleared a lot of the rubble but hadn't yet started rebuilding. They were mostly sitting around drinking tea. The foreman came up to talk to them and explain that it looked like it would be more difficult than they first thought and will probably take longer and cost more money. Oh, and could they get some feed for their horse? The men found it in the stable half-starved and while it had been eating grass and corn from the surrounding fields those plants didn't look all that....healthy.

They took watched through the night just in case, but DM failed to try and kill them in their sleep. He continued to follow them meekly as, after consulting the map he'd given them showing the nearby locations of undead, they headed south to a forest inhabited by vampires. They arrived at one of the surrounding towns, Newtown, just before dusk and went to the local inn. The innkeeper was nervous and kept mentioning how it was getting late, but they continued to drink and had just persuaded him to let them stay the night when a gang of vampires burst in. The party immediately issued a demand for Treasure Tax, which just confused them. As more vampires piled in, they passed the question of Tax to their leader who indignantly replied that round here, people paid taxes to him. After a failed attempt to beguile the Warlord, the vampire-in-charge drew his sword and Mouse promptly shot him.

Chuck moved in front of the group and asked if this really was going to become a fight. The vampire leader simply growled "Kill them," at which Chuck blasted away several of his minions and replied, "Was that directed at them or me?" Mouse shot down most of the vampires as they charged, including those who were outside but entered at the sound of a fight. Their leader attacked Mouse but then became flanked by the Warlord and Cat, and once the last of his servants had been teleported outside by Chuck he turned into mist and fled. The party settled down to finish their drinks and some hours later the innkeeper came back and acted both surprised and terrified that they were still alive.



OC Comments: Was afraid the thing with the Magus and DM would drag on too long, but thankfully the players decided to just do something and then found something else to occupy themselves with. Although I gave them the map ages ago, it shouldn't be too hard to level up some of the adventures and the others I may have to rewrite, but it's certainly easier than thinking up yet more new things.

Quote of the Session
Me: "He draws his sword."
D: "Is it a particularly nice sword?"
Me: "No, just a bog-standard short sword."
D: "Oh, in that case I shoot him."

The Convoluted History of The Campaign With No Name, Part Two E: Finally Getting Up-to-date

The First Bit, The Second Bit, The Third Bit, The Fourth Bit

The mages and the party teleported from the Arcanum to the Mages' Guildhouse in Port Haven. Due to a weird glitch in the teleport spell, everyone had a brief "vision": Mouse and the mages all saw themselves in a potential near-future situation, the Drow had a vision of Dave showing him the whereabouts of a magic dagger, the Warlord unearthed a "memory" of a possible past-self, and Chuck merely saw the wizard whose body she is inhabiting and a Tiefling arguing on a featureless plane. The mages chalk the strange occurrence up to "one of those things" and the group sets out cross country to the field where they left Charles. Once there, they check the area is still clear of undead, and the Drow digs in the spot indicated by his vision, finding a dagger that glows with divine light. The mages enter the barrow, examine the area around the frozen Charles and then start preparing for the ritual to free him.

The adventurers guard the barrow to ensure the mages are not interrupted, and it is just as well as with a bang and a cloud of smoke, a small army of undead appear across the other side of the field. As they soon make short work of the charging skeletons and zombies, they take the fight to the site of the horde arrival. The mages finish their ritual and emerge to inform the party of their partial success: they believe they have released Charles from the trap, but possible at the point in time he would have come out anyway. Or possibly another point in time. They're fairly certain he survived. They just don't know when. They suggest they may be able to do "some sort of divination" and retreat back into the barrow.

With another bang and cloud of smoke, the Magus himself arrives, along with a small retinue of skeletons and a "hostage". When he realises the PCs care nothing for the strange woman they have never seen before in their life, he attacks anyway and the woman seeks out Mouse to hide behind. After a kiss, Mouse is unable to attack the woman directly, even when she reveals herself to be a succubus. The succubus and the skeletons are eventually dealt with and the Magus beaten to the point where he flees. Chased and shot down by Mouse he surrenders.

Desperate, the Magus pleads for his life, offering them power, money, anything they want. As this doesn't seem to sway them, and begin contemplating just killing him, he blurts out that he can tell them Dungeon Master's "secret". He had just started telling them that he was working with DM to discover the secrets of a type of powerful magic item known as an "artifact" when the gnome himself appeared from behind a tree and hit the Magus with a colourful ray of magic that caused him to collapse in agony.

What followed was nothing but confusion.

The Drow cast a spell at DM to prevent him turning invisible before going to see how injured the Magus actually was. Mouse took this as a cue to attack, and promptly shot at the newly arrived wizard. The Warlord followed her lead, and Chuck and the Drow stopped the Magus from escaping. A three-way fight ensued, with the DM dropping the Magus at least once while pleading with the characters to stop fighting and just give him "that ring". After turning invisible and trying to sneak up on Chuck but being caught out by Mouse's sharp eyes and a pinch of magic dust, he finally stopped fighting and just tried to plead for the ring that Chuck had - a ring which seemed to be both powerful and evil. As Chuck was unwilling to hand it over without a good reason, they decided to take DM prisoner as well as the Magus.

Tying both of them up, they clubbed the Magus unconscious and questioned DM. He told them he needed to "consume" powerful magic items to survive and explained he'd attacked the Magus to stop him telling them "lies". A lengthy interrogation failed to get much more out of him, other than an admittance that there had in the past been other "outsiders" who he tried to "help" while also getting them to find items for him to feed on. The Magus was from a party of such adventurers, who had turned against him, as they also did in the end.....

And that's it so far! I've finally got up to date and will try and do fortnightly session write-ups, much as I do for J's primal campaign.

The Convoluted History of The Campaign With No Name*, Part Two D: In Which The PCs Do Politics

The First Bit, The Second Bit, The Third Bit

Shortly after taking office, the new Captain of the Guard learned of the ongoing rivalry between the Guard and the Sheriff. Having spotted the crude assassination attempt, he summoned the Sheriff who blustered and denied everything. He quickly set some poor underling the task of working out how to arrest/kidnap/dispose of the Sheriff and went to the pub. After hearing about this, Mouse did some "investigating" of the Sheriff's house and found evidence that he was blackmailing members of the council. Some kerfuffle and public posturing followed, and one of the blackmailees dropped hints that if the Warlord could possibly sort out the Sheriff problem once and for all that would be nice.

Chuck and the Drow went to the Grand Assemblage of the League of Eternal Discovery, and joined the Arcanum by solving a teleport maze, with the intention of using the extensive library to learn rituals. The Drow had a strange experience with a door in the library everyone else wanted to get away from but he felt strangely drawn to....An epiphany on the nature of the universe followed, while anyone else nearby just got a headache. The door may have hidden a Source of Arcane Magic or something. Whatever it was, it didn't distract him too much from spreading the Word of Dave and having some pamphlets printed.

The mages in the Department of Chronomancy were excited at the prospect of studying a Time Trap in person, but due to interfaculty politics and the need to maintain quorum in the senate, getting permission for a field trip was less than straightforward. The person in charge of signing off on expenses would only do so if the party found his sister first, who was missing presumed investigating leads to the ruins of Alabaster City in the jungle to the south.

So, leaving the mages to prepare for the trip to rescue Charles and the city Guard plotting to take down the Sheriff, the four adventurers headed south, following hints and rumours of a determined archaeologist and avoiding most of (but not all) the dangerous wildlife. They made their way to a hole in the ground that was the adventuring mage's last known destination, and fought some duergar that were guarding it. Making their way down, they faced stirges and more duergar, and an angry dragon at the bottom who told them to p*ss off before attacking. Once they'd beaten the dragon up a bit, it shapeshifted into a humanoid form and admitted defeat. Turns out the dragon was the mage they were looking for, and she thought they were rivals looking to steal her "find" from her. She showed them the decorative portal that she believed led to the Alabaster City but which she had been unable to open. She conceded to return with them, but only to regroup and do some more research before heading back, and they headed back to the city.

Once back in the city, the Sheriff sends an assassin after them, who dies horribly. Then he attempts to settle the situation by a duel, with the winner taking up the combined post of Sheriff and Captain of the Guard. However, as he names a champion to fight on his behalf, the Warlord decides to name his own champion, and persuades the dragon mage/archaeologist to fight on his behalf. The Sheriff's champion turns out to be a bitter, twisted, Pete who had been held captive and tortured by the Magus all this time and now sported a withered Wight claw instead of his normal left hand. The dragon mauled him horribly, Mouse stopped the Sheriff's bodyguard unleashing undead to distract from the fight and the Warlord stopped the Sheriff himself escaping. Once it was all over, the Warlord left some poor sap as Acting Guard Captain, the mage had been press-ganged into sitting on the council and the Sheriff was due to be executed.

Then they finally set out to rescue Charles from the Time Trap with the Chronomancers.


* Yeah, I've given up.