The World of Telvar

The fighter Halacar and the cleric Browork went to meet them. Browork was soon fleeing toward the back of the party with a wound, but Halacar killed one. Standish and Kelric charged through the party, along with Frag, to attack the vicious creatures. Several were Slept by Lissar and Kessel, who took cover behind the fighters. Kelric, Standish, Halacar, and a very proficient Brigling took the creatures down without much trouble. Most of the damage had been taken by Browork, who also had to duck another missile from Brigling during the combat.

We headed back down the tunnel, only to find ourselves attacked from both sides by birds. Kessel launched a Web at back of the party, which was holding its own initially. The front of the party, Kelric and Standish, along with help from Brigling and Frag, began slashing through the creatures without too much trouble.

The back of the party was faring much worse. Halacar killed a creature, but Browork nearly went down with three separate hits. He retreated, and the only person who could cover him was... Lissar, the mage.

Lissar stepped forward, and was promptly smacked around. Halacar finished his off, moved to cover and swung his falchion just as the bird-thing attacked him...

The result was spectacular.

Halacar's falchion (quality, +1/+1, no less) exploded in his hands, and the shards flew directly into the hapless Lissar, nearly dropping the mage. The bird's free attack then pummeled Halacar, who was merely sitting dazed for a moment.

Lissar scrambled back, but most of the other bird people were trapped in the Web, so Halacar moved to cover him again, and succeeded. Two other creatures were slowly breaking out of the Web, but through the combined efforts of Standish, Kelric, Frag, and Brigling, the creatures were dropped before or as they came out of the Web.

Mass healing was done. We decided to look for the birds' lair, hoping to get actual treasure out of this mess. Unfortunately, despite a lot of searching we couldn't find it, though we did find a burrowed hole leading to a bricked off end.

We limped home and healed.

We set off on another expedition, but thanks to some wonderful rolling by yours truly, the expedition was quite short.

As the party traveled to Wizard Mountain, a huge silhouette appeared in the sky, and the black dragon descended on the party.

The whole party hit the dirt. Most of the party was disoriented with fear, and the dogs cowered. Several of the party had hidden successfully, leaving Frag, Browork, Halacar, and Kelric in the open (woodsman, cleric, fighter, fighter, all in metal armor).

The dragon swooped down first on the hapless guard dog, who yelped uselessly. The dog was killed instantly as the talons grabbed it and rended it to shreds. The dog was popped into the creature's mouth and it circled for more food.

The visible party members scattered, running for their lives. The dragon swooped down at its first target, the new party member Frag.

Realizing his end had arrived, the woodsman turned and set his spear for charge. The dragon shrugged and breathed acid all over him, melting him into a pile of goo. The dragon rose and circled, still looking for food.

Kelric was next. He saw his doom approaching and tried to evade the creature, unsuccessfully. He was snatched up but survived and stabbed the creature in the mouth. He fumbled and his sword dropped to the ground. The teeth gnashed tighter, but Kelric still lived. He was wedged in, and frantically began a last ditch attempt to injure the creature.

He hastily pulled out his flasks of oil and tried to light them....

Gulp. Burp.

The dragon flew away, content. The party ran for home.

Replacing the dead characters were Alain the half-orc fighter and Crack, Frag's older brother hobgoblin woodsman. The party set out again. The guard dog was replaced.

We reached Wizard Mountain without incident, and did a whole lot of exploring. Most of this was mapping. There were a number of rock traps we believe were set up by the bird people that injured Standish's war dog. Brigling also dodged one such trap. We finally found some sort of lair for the birds, since it was vaguely nestlike. There were six red gems in the center that we evaluated at 50 gp each. We took them.

We eventually found a room with a weird pile of metal in the middle of it. The metal moved, and we initially thought it might be a gelatinous cube and shot OVER it. When the arrow passed through and the thing faded into the shadows, we got nervous. We spotted the thing coming along the wall at us. Brigling shot it but the arrow bounced off. Then Standish cleaved it in half with one swing of his sword (+1/+4 vs. reptiles).

It was some kind of weak golem shaped like a snake. Strange.

Eventually we found a spiral staircase, which we left for the moment, and a mortared section against the cave wall. There was a weird droning sound emanating from the spiral staircase, so we went with bashing down the mortar.

Alain crashed through easily, and we found ourselves face to face with, oh, maybe forty 8' tall lizardmen.

"We run," declared Crack. And so we did.

We ran through windy corridors, and eventually stopped to test a Sleep spell (we moved faster than the lizards). The Sleep went off and affected only ONE of them. We nodded and ran all the way out of the cave. The lizards stopped following us when we reached the sunlight.

We ate lunch outside, and then went back in.

The lizards were gone. We decided to head up the spiral staircase into the droning noise. Up the stairs we saw a room with sunlight streaming in. There were weird wind currents in the room. There was a table with a goblet, and a weird coral-skinned gorilla-like thing.

We decided to check out the alcoves.

"But don't touch anything," said a voice into our minds.

Uh.

It turned out there was a bored trapped air elemental in the room. We chatted with the thing, and it turned out it had been around for about 500 years, since it had been summoned by a wizard "for a week or so." It was bored with the prime material plane, and its only friend was the gorilla, which would kill us if we touched it or the elemental got annoyed. It had a smug and superior attitude, but let us look around the room anyway. We saw some skeletons in the alcove and quite a bit of treasure, but we didnt touch it. We left and told it we would return to chat. We're not sure, but we think the creature didn't really mind despite its snide comments about immortality and and such.

We founded a small beach area with a small waterfall in it. We started along the corridor when a blinding light hit the party from up front. All but Brigling, Lissar, and Kessel were blinded by the light. Something was approaching rapidly. The party staggered slowly backwards, leaving the war dog behind to battle the creature. The dog injured the thing before getting killed. Brigling shot at it, but missed. The creature continued to approach, and the blind Standish turned to fight it, directed by Brigling. Standish cleaved through it, and discovered that it was a reptile (his sword was +4)! Standish had been latched onto, though, and took significant damage.

The party settled down to rest until our eyesight returned.

20 minutes later, the party was still blind. Suddenly something clear and oozing grabbed Lissar's legs and began to dissolve them! Oil was hurled at it, but the flames had no effect. The creature was badly injured by a sword hit (I forget who did it) and tried to escape. Crack refused to let it get away and stabbed at it with his spear despite being off-balance. The thing died and sank into the water.

We healed Lissar and settled down to wait some more.

About ten minutes later, the still blind Halacar found his arms feeling like jelly. He was barely conscious and mumbled for help from the party. There was nothing there, but Halacar was pale and drawn. Alain swept the area above and behind Halacar with his magical quarterstaff, and hit something! Whatever it was stepped out of the way and was gone before anyone could swing again.

Shuddering, we ran back to town. Halacar recovered in a few days, but he had lost a lot of blood plasma and had two marks on the back of his neck.

Seems like a vampire was sucking on Halacar's blood. Great.

Until next time!

Joel/Halacar/Browork