Current 3E Campaign Recap

(Kolos is my campaign world for D&D.)

Here is a recap of the campaign that is going on in my world currently. Note that this is written is if you were a player, since I'm lifting it straight from my e-mail recaps.

In the previous incarnation of the gaming group (Ray, Dana, Eric, me), the party had left town around 9 AM. It was a foggy day -- a very foggy day. Around 11 AM, they had encountered four-winged birds (arrowhawks). The arrowhawks were hunting, but decided to prey on something other than the PC's. Somewhere between this encounter and 1 PM, the group's ranger got separated from the rest of the group and has not yet been seen again.

At 1 PM, Charlie's character, Enaias, and Lori's character, Anya, hear Dana's character, Marda, and Ray's character, Artimus, calling for their lost ranger friend. Eventually, through the mists, the groups meet up and begin to travel together in search of a giant.

2:30 PM, Marda, the only character whose name does not begin with a vowel, sees a 6-legged rabbit off the trail. Anya "gets it."

3:30 PM, near a clearing, the group sees a double-bodied rat. While Marda and Enaias set up a snare, the rat disappears among the brush of the forest floor. A quick search shows the rat to be in the nearby clearing, heading up the hill towards a hole in the ground. Marda scouts it out and finds that there is an unstable place in the floor. Eventually, most of the group enters. There are six-legged rabbits inside, who disappear at the back of the cave. Moments later, one rabbit runs back up and out. It dodges past several members of the party inside before Anya "gets it." Inside the cave-like area, leg bones were found sticking out of the wall. Enaias pulls them out of the wall. Marda sends her weasel down the stairs to look around. It reports that the place smells like a tomb (how this particular weasel knew that, I have no idea - must be some sort of second-level weasel).

The party moves down the stairs to the left and finds a door, as well as a dead six-legged rabbit on the stairs. Anya doesn't "get it." Enaias unlocks the door. Artimus detects undead after moving through the door, but unfortunately, his spell expires. The group peers cautiously around, but is attacked by a shadow. Another shadow moves through the wall and attacks Anya. Marda is drained of 5 points of strength, but the shadows are dispatched without causing further harm.

The party then goes through the coffins, finding 30 SP in each one. They return to the stairs and proceed downward. For the next encounter, against zombies, the party splits up a little bit. Anya luckily finds three zombies. Two of them attack her while the other looks to vent its hatred of the living on Marda and Enaias. Artimus moves down the hall and finds four other zombies. Enaias peppers them with arrows while Artimus attacks. Anya kills her two attackers, collects her stuff and goes around the corner. Artimus turns one zombie. Between him and Enaias, all are killed except the one that was turned. That lucky one found the advancing barbarian and is killed.

After collecting another 210 SP, the group finds a spiral staircase leading down. At the bottom of the spiral staircase is a door with a good lock. Enaias is unable to open it gracefully, so brute force is chosen. The door splinters away to reveal a corridor with five doors. A cloud of mist that appeared at the far end of the hallway moves through the party and up the spiral staircase, followed closely by Anya. The vampire that was so recently in mist form solidified on the stairs to the top level. It attempts to charm Anya into giving up her blood to it, but she resists. A battle is begun. Artimus follows after a few seconds and catches up to the melee that is taking place on the stairs. Anya is hit and feels the dreaded touch of undeath, temporarily draining her essence. The rest of the party arrives in time to see Artimus call upon the might of his god and destroy the abomination in a blinding flash of sunlight.

Feeling tired and somewhat picked upon, the party makes camp in a very nice location about a quarter of a mile away. The site is right on a stream. In the morning, the group returns to the tomb. In the corridor of five doors, they discuss what approach they would like to take when all doors open at once. A ghost materializes in the hallway and rewards them for driving off the evil. "You may take anything you wish," he tells them. The ghost then settles into its coffin, leaving the two treasure rooms, two tomb rooms and a spiral staircase available to the party. The dais holding the coffin that the ghost settled into had writing on it, presumably a name, in a language unknown to anyone in the party. Marda had taken a rubbing of the writing. There was similar writing on the other dais on the same level, which was also recorded.

In one treasure room is a bastard sword in a glass case that rests upon a pedestal. A silver chain hangs from the wall. In the other treasure room is a pedestal upon which is found a spellbook and a wand. Along the wall of this room is another chain of an odd metal. Magic is detected upon the sword, wand and the chain on the wall.

The last door reveals a spiral staircase leading down, which the group next follows. At the bottom is a trap door under a very poorly kept rug. Under the trap door is dirt. Luckily for a certain young lady, the group digs down into the dirt and finds boards. Removing the boards with a handy crowbar, they find that certain young lady, a 12-year-old resident of the town of Gedymin. Her name is Merylle. She was bitten by the vampire, but is still alive.

Taking young Merylle, the group then returns to Stirnus. They arrive in the evening. Artimus delivers the girl to the church where he learns that Gedymin has not existed for the past 200 years. The group also learns that the giant had been spotted very close to the southern trade route.

The group's intentions at this point: Rest overnight. Resupply lost equipment and provisions. Visit the mage's tower and have their new-found items identified. Obtain horses.

The party started out in the town of Stirnus. It was the day after delivering Merylle to the church. Marda's strength drain is almost gone. Three of you went to the wizard's tower/school in town while Anya went to get horses.

The three at the tower met with Floki, who cast detect magic on the stuff that you wanted to have identified. He noticed that the chain wasn't magical, but shrugged and took it in anyway. He arranged for Erika (a wizard) to cast Identify on them. You also asked about Gedymin (the town that hasn't existed for 200 years) and about the script that you rubbed off of the dais. With the mention of Gedymin, you got the interest of a powerful wizard named Farouk (14th level wiz), who requested to see you after lunch.

You left the tower (after specifically securing a receipt for the items you brought in) to go do some shopping and get lunch. Then, all four of you met up after that and returned to the tower to talk with Farouk. Farouk was an older guy who moves very slowly. You went into the tower/school to the second level and into a pretty well appointed room where the old guy was sitting in a chair and invited you all to sit as well.

He spoke with you about Gedymin and its location (far, far to the east). You handed him a spellbook to look through. He flipped through it and the piece of paper fell out with a few strange symbols on it. You were able to discover that one of the symbols was that of Zar. On the left of that was a picture of a couple houses, possibly representing a town. On the right was a point-down gem-like shape with a line through it, and beyond that, what you believe to be representations of a graveyard.

Anyway, Farouk revealed that the town had been nearly completely wiped out by some plague. Those who hadn't died became horribly deformed (growing extra ears, arms, etc.) and became outcasts of society. That's when you revealed that you had eaten of the deformed 6-legged rabbit. Farouk suggested a visit to the church.

When you got to the church (that of Ehlonna), you discovered that the girl had disappeared in the night. She wasn't locked in. Nobody at the gate had seen her leave. The clerics had been running around trying to find her all morning with no luck. Finally, they discovered someone who had seen her walking south along the trade route last night.

While Farouk and the high priest were talking, they teleported away to somewhere.

You decided it would be a good idea to go and find the giant, then maybe follow up on the girl's story. So, you gathered your stuff together, and retrieved your items from Erika (who was identifying them). She revealed the wand to be a wand of magic missile and the bastard sword to be +1 with "some other property that she wasn't able to determine."

You left the spellbook with the wizards so that it could be looked at. The next morning, you set off to the south to find the giant. You traveled all day without incident, and towards dusk, you saw a fight going on ahead. You saw the giant fighting humanoids. There were lots of humanoids. As you got closer, the giant threw a boulder, killing one of the humanoids, then ran off.

The humanoids were orcs, but you also saw, counted among the dead, the four people who had chased the giant in this direction. You fought against the orcs and eventually won against the 13 orcs. This gave the giant time to get away.

During the orc battle, Enaias had been standing back plunking the orcs with arrows. He let them get too close to him, and one charged him and scored a critical hit (24 points of damage with his greataxe that technically should have been 36 damage, but oh, well). Enaias went to -2, then -3, -4, -5, then stabilized. The rest of the group was able to defeat the orcs, though.

Anya (on horseback) was favored by the gods that day, being able to repel the attack of three orcs simultaneously.

So, the orc battle behind you, you collected a bunch of armor and greataxes together and loaded them onto horses. Enaias moves off to look for the giant's trail. He finds it. You follow it a LOOOONG way. Eventually, you lose the trail. Enaias begins to look around and as he gets to the top of a hill, he notices a body on the next hill over. He and Marda check it out and find that the body had been exsanguinated. There were no tracks leading to or away from the body. It looked like it had been dropped here. They find two puncture wounds on the neck.

After this, you look around some more and find the trail of the giant again. You follow it and eventually lose it again. You decide that you know the general direction the giant was heading and keep going. Marda's pony is walking along and trips on something. She looks down at the pony's head and said, "Stupid pony." She keeps going for a few steps, then looks back and sees what caused it to trip. There was a giant's footprint on the ground that had gone unnoticed. You are back on track. You are heading towards the mountains. Near the mountains, Artimus begins itching. You all suspect that he's going to grow another arm or ear or something. Turns out that a fungus had been growing on him. It covered much of his body. It looked like a fungus that you would find on a dead body. Then, Marda and Anya had similar patches, but much less. Artimus washed/peeled it off, as did the others, and you kept going.

You got to the mountains, and see where a rough, rocky trail goes up between two mountains. Marda goes right, Enaias goes left and the other two stay on the trail. Marda sees a stone building. She gets closer and discovers it to be a monastery. You all eventually get to the monastery to stay the night. You are treated with something that cools your skin and smells minty (you called it Ben-Gay). The monks didn't have any information about the giant or the vampire. That's about where we stopped for that night.

You stayed at the monastery overnight. Artimus woke up in the forest in the morning, feeling quite cold. Nobody saw him leave, either. During the night, he had a dream about the map fragment and the black dot that moved in over it.

In the morning, I showed you the map that I had made out of the large scrolly paper. Artimus recognized the area of the map that represented the monastery and knew he had seen it before, in his dream.

The monks had also translated the two dais rubbings to be two names: Larisa and Ottar.

As you began to head out, you saw a giant's footprint leaving the area of the monastery. On the next section of road, you saw two impact footprints, as if this were a place where the giant landed. You headed out, and went in the direction that the black dot came from. You found a cave, and investigated it, but didn't find anything conclusive. It was a dead end, you concluded. (So much for it being inconclusive.)

You went back to the fork in the road and went down the other path. This lead you to another fork in the road. Knowing that dwarves were straight ahead, and to the left, the road lead to a large cave that could easily house a giant, you went left. After traveling in this direction for a little while, Enaias, the elf, heard something from behind them. He checked it out, but didn't see anything. Anyway, you didn't find who was following you, and you kept going.

After the trail started getting more winding, you saw the giant up ahead. When you closed the gap down, you saw he was fighting against orcs. You then positioned yourselves so that the elf and the barbarian were on the side of the mountain (to the other side was a cliff). The others were standing there, while Marda approached behind the giant. You watched as the giant and the orcs fought, and Marda went back to the others to tell them what she saw. The monk chose this time to move past you all and enter the combat, fighting against the orcs. You entered the combat area and attacked the giant, barely wounding it. You watched, too, as the giant took out one or two orcs with each swing of his giant club. You also watched as the orc in the back kept rolling dead orcs off the cliff. Then, the orcs got into the combat fiercely. The one in the very back (who was rolling orcs off the side of the cliff) launched a bolt of lightning into the giant. Enaias trains his bow on the lightning-throwing orc and begins to shoot. He and the other two orcs in the back run up the hill and begin attacking characters there. Enaias gets taken down under another greataxe (he now hates orcs with greataxes totally!). They moved over to the barbarian.

Meanwhile, the monk has said "stop attacking the giant" to Marda and Artimus. They wanted an explanation, but started beating up on orcs. After a little more combat, there were only a couple orcs left. The barbarian summoned a badger, who did enough damage to finish off one of the two orcs she faced. The other, the lightning-thrower, then runs and takes a Peter Pan flying leap off the cliff. Members of the party run over to see what happened, and start shooting arrows at him. They hit him twice, but he survives it and flees into the woods below. Anya, then decides to lasso a tree and jump down the cliffside in pursuit of, *ahem*, "to get" the orc that got away. What she didn't realize was that it was 300' down, not 50'. So she gets to the end of her rope and decides to try to keep going. She gets her axe out and tries to use it to show her descent. She succeeds at getting pretty stuck. Meanwhile, the on-looking giant decides he can help and runs down the road a bit to a place he can climb down. He climbs down to Anya and has Anya get on his back. The whole time he was climbing up again, she was tapping him on the shoulder and pointing down, saying "go that way." He just nodded and kept climbing up. He got her up to the top, where the rest of the party had looted the bodies of the orcs. In addition to coinage and necklaces, they found that the orcs weren't a normal patrol. They had tents, bedrolls and iron rations, as though they were traveling to somewhere.

During the battle with the orcs, it was revealed that the bastard sword that Enaias is using is an orc slayer (+1d6 damage versus orcs).

You took your spoils and found the huge cave, where you settled in for the night. You narrowed the front entrance somewhat, and built a ram guard of wood out front, too, trying to make the cave more defensible. You stayed here overnight, with the giant and the monk. The barbarian went hunting, but didn't get much that night. Overnight, it snowed a lot. In the morning, the barbarian tried hunting again, and came back with a deer. She dropped it and said, "Help me get the other one." (natural 20 for hunting) Also, overnight, there was a fairly substantial earthquake. In the morning, you saw 3-4 feet of snow on the ground. That's about where we left off.

When we got together, the party was in the giant's mountain cave. It had snowed a lot overnight, and there was an earthquake. You were with the monk from the monastery, too. Anya started to get the horses ready for the snow. While she was doing this, she felt that the snow was unnatural to her.

The party started out and headed down the mountain, down the curvy road that lead to the valley below. After getting about halfway between the end of the curvy downhill part and the "T" intersection with the other road, you met up with a troop of 50 dwarves. They were lead by a dwarf who had a ray of reddish light springing from his hand. He was melting the snow away so that the troops could move out more easily. You talked with the lead dwarf about things. The dwarves were looking for orc activity. Of course, the party volunteers that they had encountered some orcs. The dwarves started following that trail up the mountain. The party decided they want to follow them. The monk had to return to his monastery. You got as far as the giant's cave.

As they got to the top of the mountain where the giant's cave is, the dwarves, upon seeing that the giant was sitting out front, hesitated a moment, then hurried past. The party lingered a bit to wave "hi" (since you have no common language). The giant poked Anya in the back, then pointed across the valley to the neighboring mountain. On that mountain, you could make out a band of about 30 orcs hurriedly tearing down their camp. With the cliff in the way, you had to backtrack a bit. The dwarves followed. They got down, and approached the orcs they had seen. 5 orcs had stayed behind to be a terribly effective ambush. The party spotted them setting up and flanked them, 2 on each side. In a quick battle initiated by Anya and her "get it" tendencies, the orcs were taken out. Marda, seeing that things were under control, left this scene to check out the orc camp proper. She found the fire still smoldering and some other equipment laying around. The orcs left in a hurry.

Following her over the mountain, and into the next valley to the south, you saw the tracks disappear into a small cave. Along the way, you found two dead orcs (apparently died of exposure or something). The cave entrance had been collapsed by the orcs after they went in. By now, the troop of dwarves had caught up. They began to excavate. Artimus (Ray's character) got the idea to go get the giant to help dig it out.

In the meantime, the monk went back to the monastery. He noticed that something was amiss, and that the kitchen smelled really bad. He began to run, trying to catch up with the party. He met up with the giant, who carried him back down the mountain to follow after the party. The giant and monk met up with Artimus where the trail split (one way going up the mountain to the giant's cave, the other way leading into the valley). After the monk explained the apocalyptic nature of his emergency, Artimus waited at the crossroad while the giant and the monk went to where the other were. The monk convinced you to follow him and the giant, and you all together went back to the monastery. The giant didn't fit inside the monastery. Once you got back to the monastery, you started to grow more and more suspicious of the monk.

You went in, then through the entryway, through the next room, and into the dining room. The monk lead you to the kitchen. In the dining room, you found a letter for you that outlined some details about the two names they got from the rubbings. (Please send me the text of that, since I forgot to get a copy for myself.) The monk then led you to the stairs down in the kitchen. You went downstairs and found a backwards-S shaped level. Basically, a level split into three sections. The first two areas contained supplies. The third held coffins. At the end of this level, there was a large hole. You went down the hole and into the large (80' in diameter) chamber. Here, you faced and defeated four ghouls. You found Brother Michael's holy symbol here, and some money, too. You were about to enter the crack in the wall that lead to a corridor in the rock, but that's where we wrapped up.

At the start of the session, the party was below the monastery. You had just killed the four ghouls in the 80' circular chamber. There was a crack in the wall that you went into that lead to a choice of two directions. The first direction was to the right, was older, well used, but not recently, and natural. The second was to the left (more like straight, really), and worked stone. There was a body between the worked stone and the crypts. It was rolled up in a carpet. The first thing you did was detect magic. I said that the carpet glows. Artimus picked up the end of the carpet, unrolling it. Okay, the body flops out. ::die roll:: You hear a *crush* sound (like glass breaking, but muffled). Then, part of the body disappeared, rendering the potion of invisibility useless. There was also a scroll. The guy was dressed kindof like a ninja.

To the right you went, and found the crypts below the monastery. It's not big, and not really remarkable in any way. You decided, though, to re-seal it, as you had been attacked by ghouls, and several bodies were missing from among the dead. So you built a quick stone wall. Anya blessed it when it was done.

Then, it was off down the long, seemingly-man-made corridor. After 200+ feet, it branched off, left/right/straight. The intersecting passage was at an angle, slightly, not 90 degrees. To the left, the passage narrowed down to nothing. Straight, the passage ended at a cliff, that went down about 500'. There was a little lip here, left and right, but you didn't investigate it much. To the right, you went down the passage. It went downhill, and ended in a cliff on the right. Dropping down 40', you found another landing, kindof like a switchback. That ended in a cliff to the left, 60' drop. There was a rope here. You went down this as well. Enaias started moving forward down this 20' wide corridor. It widened, and ended in a cliff. Halfway down (it was about 80' long), he started smelling "ben gay". You recognized it as the smell from the balm that the monks used on them to heal you. Then, you said one of those things that I'll never forget: "Maybe the monks have a natural spring of it down here."

The cliff that this ended in was 25' down, and lead to an octagonal room, 50' across. On the far side was a boulder. To the left of that, another exit in a 10' drop. In the middle of the room was the hydra. It noticed you. It wasn't too frightening at first, until I drew in the real "face/reach" size of the beast. Then it was more "eek"! It advanced on you. You attacked it. You kept saying, "don't cut the heads off." Then, I reread the part in the monster manual that said - there are two ways of killing it 1) cut all heads off... 2) kill the body. Anyway, you started launching arrows/bolts at it, some spells, and lots of whacks with various weapons.

Behind the boulder was Mike's character, Tyro, and five monks that smelled of the ben-gay stuff. They had been trying to heal. Tyro came out and started hitting the hydra in the back with a crossbow, which the hydra mostly ignored. So it climbed up the cliff face, and started chomping. Artimus, in front, got bit up pretty good and went unconscious. You finally got it down close to dead when of course you are starting to talk about withdrawing and healing, etc. But you decided to press the attack. A final critical hit from the crossbow from behind was enough to take it out. I described it being engulfed in flames, beginning where the crossbow entered it, and ending at the heads. Nothing remained of the beast, not even ashes.

The group is just relaxing, starting to talk and recuperate a bit. Anya and Artimus were at the top doing the healing thing. The rest were near the edge, or climbing down or down at the bottom of the 25' drop. It was then that the walls started closing in. I had let Tyro know that the monks had found a harp and when they strummed it, the octagonal room was created. Well, now it was going away. The boulder that was in the middle made some really nasty, ominous cracking noises. Finally, it explodes in a hail of rocks (reflex save for 1/2, d12 damage, 7). The battered monks slowly emerge from behind where the boulder was. You chat a bit, and the main monk guy, Brother Michael, is holding the harp in a hug to his chest. Very possessive. He said that the harp called to them, and they retrieved it. It was lost to the monks long ago, before his birth. So you chat, and he describes that when he strummed the chord on the harp, the room was created and the hydra appeared. After a bit of discussion, the monks began to ascend and the rest of the group (with the addition of Tyro) started to descend (that exit on the left of the octagonal room). 10' drop follows downward slope follows 10' drop, etc. It curves to the left, to the right and back to the left again. Kindof disorienting on direction. The passageway opened up into the huge vaulted chamber that the other dead-end opened into. So the ceiling is at least 500' up, and the floor from here is 150' down. There is a decent-sized ledge here, 20' wide, spanning maybe 80-100' left to right (tapered on the ends). Anya was leading, and emerged first. To her right, far below, she heard metal-on-metal grating sounds. To her left, she heard shuffling briefly. Looking left, she sees a huge, 15' spider. Eek! She reacts slowly, giving the spider time to move into position and nearly paralyze her with its bite. She falls under the weight of her armor. Then, the rest of the party approaches and begins to attack the thing (except for Enaias, who maintained a healthy distance from it). It drained strength from Artimus and Marda. Tyro tries to take a flask of oil and throw it at the spider. He misses. It bounces off the soft part of he spider and lands without breaking. It begins to roll slowly toward the cliff behind the spider. Tyro mage-hands it and tries to levitate it above the spider to drop it. As he does, Anya (who for good reason has flown into a rage) scores a beautiful maximum- damage critical hit. So Tyro mage-hands the flask back to himself and puts it in his pack.

After the encounter with the poisonous spider, Tyro ties a note to his familiar with instructions to take it to the monks, hoping that they can help out with neutralizing the poison that many of you are feeling.

Below, you hear squeaks, and start to make out voices. Enaias starts to climb down to get a better look. Shortly, he sees a handful of torches, and sees a group of 9 orcs pushing a seige engine (tower-like thing) with two ogre taskmasters pushing them along. He climbs up and wants very much to take them out with arrows. He begins arguing his case with the rest of the group who say to just let them by and watch where they go.

As the intraparty argument progressed, you hear, "squeak squeak squeak." Your reply was, "Huh? What's this squeak squeak squeak?" That's what you began to hear from below, coming from the same direction as you heard the noise from the siege engine originally.

And that's where we left off for the day.

We started up on the 150' high ledge over the underground roadway. Enaias was mostly unhurt from the spider attack. Three of the other four members of the party were affected by strength loss from spider venom, however. The "squeak squeak squeak" from the end of the last session was a wagon that was leading a troop of 100 orcs.

The owl that Tyro had sent after the monks came back saying he couldn't find them. Four out of five party members surveyed said, "Yes, I'm resting and recovering." Meanwhile, Enaias (and the owl) scouted out the left-end of the road. He followed the 100 orcs and the wagon to see where they were going. He found that after four miles, a cavern opens up. In the cavern is an orc city. As he was watching, he noticed that there are men, women, and teens, but no children orcs. He thinks this is more of an outpost than a city. While he was watching, he heard something coming from behind him. He hid, and watched as 4 robed orcs, accompanied by 2 ogres, went past and into the city. [Owl gacks up bones?]

The orc city had a staging area to the right of the tunnel entrance, where there were 4 siege engines. There were guards along the entire perimeter. They were well organized. Enaias decides he is going to try to cause some mischief, and is spotted by one of the pairs of orcs on patrol. One approaches while the other runs for help. The one that approached was killed by Enaias and a good shot with a dagger. He hid the body. The other was coming with another orc. They find Enaias and Enaias hits one with a dagger. Basically, Enaias runs after not being able to take out one of the orcs. Two orcs give chase. He is able to out-run them, and sets up an ambush with his bow. He takes out one with an arrow. The other critically hits him with a Javelin before dying (he was the one who was wounded by Enaias's dagger before the chase began). Enaias sneaks back down the corridor towards the city. On the way, he discovers that they have sent out an orc patrol after him. He turns around and returns to the others on the ledge.

Back on the ledge, Artimus is sleeping and praying, trying to help the group recover by casting Minor Restoration to restore strength.

While they are recovering, they are attacked by four small, poisonous spiders. They take them out fairly easily. During that fight, Tyro feels the sting of poison and loses strength to them as well. Now, four out of five party members surveyed said, "Yes, I have felt the sting of spider poison, and no, I don't like it."

You continue to recover when the prismatic wall springs up around you. (I had taped the card marked "Drama" [Marda] to the wall. I set up the other four cards, two on the half-wall, one on the table in front of me, and one on the table that had the food on it. The other cards said, "a sea in" [Enaias], "air must" [Artimus], "a any" [Anya] and "troy" [Tyro].) Eventually, each person said his or her character's name, and the wall was brought down. It was puzzling not because of having to figure out how to bring the wall down, but because whoever brought it into being knows that you were here, and knew your names. Tyro would later recall that his master was very adept with prismatic spells.

The group continues to recover, and Enaias scouts the other way in the tunnel. He finds that after a quarter mile or so, a ledge rises up on the right-hand side. It rises to 50 feet above the floor of the cavern. He uses that to continue scouting. After a couple miles, he begins to see light ahead. After 4 miles, he comes up to the 150' wide opening on the other side. Out on the plains, he sees a unit of 100 orcs making their way towards the opening. He returns to the group to report his findings.

So, the party has recovered some, and decide to return to the monastery. You climb up the slope back to where the octagonal room once was, then climb the cliffs to the top of the 500' high opening onto the underground roadway. When you get up there, you notice that the man-made passageway that leads from here back to the monastery was gone. It is as if it never existed, not like it was caved in.. So you return to the 150' high ledge. At this point, Tyro decides to take the time to identify the carpet. He discovers that it is a carpet of flying!

Tyro, Marda and Enaias scout out on the carpet of flying, and find that the tunnel goes 1 mile past the 150' wide opening, then splits so there is an upper tunnel, a lower tunnel and a tunnel off to the right. The upper tunnel and the tunnel off to the right are air vents. The lower tunnel is 60' high, 600' deep and holds supplies and is guarded by 30 orcs (that you could see).

Marda uses the flying carpet to drop off Enaias and Tyro outside the 150' opening. You hide in the woods while Marda returns to the ledge. She picks up Artimus and the rest of the gear and goes to where Tyro and Enaias are hiding. Then, she returns to pick up Anya. You all get back together outside the opening. From here, you traveled to the monastery. When you get there, you find that the monastery is boarded up, the door is locked. The windows are boarded over. Marda's pony is gone, but the other horses are here.

Tyro flies Anya and Marda up to a window on the left side of the monastery, and Anya pulls the boards off. Marda pops the window out. Anya goes inside and makes her way to the front door, where Enaias is trying to pick the lock (DC 30). When Anya says something, Enaias hears a noise come from the tower to the right of the door. Tyro and Marda fly up to look in the window. They see the door at the top of the stairs that is ajar, and light coming from beyond it. Marda sends the weasel in to check it out. He climbs up to the top of the stairs. When the weasel got about 3 steps from the top, a head appeared briefly at the door, and then disappeared, slamming the door closed. The weasel can't find a way through, so returns to Marda.

Meanwhile, Anya pops the boards off the front door and opens it. "Watch head. I did not take off all the boards." Everyone comes inside. Marda heads towards the kitchen. Enaias and Tyro head towards the tower and upstairs. Artimus guards the entrance to the spiral staircase, halfway between the groups.

In the kitchen, Marda finds that someone had painted marks on the wall in blood. They recognized the down-pointing pizza shape as resembling the picture from the paper that had fallen out of the spellbook. There was scribbling on the wall in blood, also. Marda calls for the others to join her. Anya does. There was a low wall next to the stairs that led downstairs. The center section had been pushed in and collapsed onto the stairs. They investigated closer and found a bloody handprint on a rock that would have been at the top of the wall. The wall was pushed in intentionally. They also found a bootprint going up over the rubble. Someone had walked up the stairs after the wall was collapsed.

Investigating downstairs, someone had set several traps such that if you were to step on them, a spiked rope would constrict around your leg and hurt you, possibly very badly. Marda found and disabled several. Anya cut the rope to the counterweight on another. The whole storage area was trashed. They got to the end, where the coffins were. The coffins were pushed into the hole and smashed open on the rocks below. They returned upstairs to the dining room area.

In the meantime, Tyro and Enaias have gotten through the door at the top of the stairs. They get to the 4-way intersection of hallways, and head down the hallway that the monks rooms were on. There is light coming out from under one of the doors. They get to that door. It's not locked. Tyro positions himself to open the door while Enaias nocks an arrow. He is ready to shoot when Tyro opens the door. Inside the room, the bed, desk, chair and bookshelf are all pushed to one end of the room. In the center of the floor is a stone statue of four monks holding hands, each sitting on the floor. In the center of the stone monk circle is Brother Michael, standing, clutching the harp to his chest. Enaias tries to talk with him, but he is quite distant (i.e., not all there). Enaias wants to shoot an arrow at him, but Tyro intervenes. After not getting through to Brother Michael for a time, Brother Michael sits down in the center of the circle. He continues to clutch the harp to his chest. Tyro and Enaias can't talk with him, so they want to try knocking him out. Tyro hits him with a magic missile. Brother Michael is hit in the chest, through the harp. He begins to fold, leaning forward, not making a sound. Enaias wants to grapple with him to get the harp away. He moves forward and grabs him. He notices as he lifts him up that Brother Michael pivoted strangely.

Brother Michael begins to slip into the floor. Enaias tries to grab him and can't. By this time, Artimus has made it upstairs. He reacts and tries to help Enaias lift, but they fail, and Brother Michael disappears into a black hole in the floor. They ran downstairs to see if Brother Michael appeared through the ceiling, but he doesn't. They return upstairs (the whole party is together again now), and Anya casts detect magic. There is a faint radiation of magic from the spot on the floor where Brother Michael disappeared. Tyro pokes it with his staff, and when he pulls his staff back, it resists somewhat. A small portion of the bottom of his staff is no longer there. Anya (with her detect magic) notices that the area no longer radiates magic.

You search around the room and the monastery. Tyro finds Brother Michael's holy symbol beneath the desk in the room where the stony monks are. You scrounge up food, and can get blankets and other supplies. That is where we left off. Brother Michael is gone. Marda's pony is gone. Zia is gone.

Next game session has not yet been scheduled.