The World of Telvar

It had a solid gold cow shaped belt buckled worth 600 gp, and the party collected
gold from a sack as well as gold pieces used to pave the floor, with a total value
of about 3000 gold coins. The body itself was sold for 35 gp. And we paid
to find out about the thing. Apparently they are solitary creatures that live
at the edge of goblin realms and kill goblins just because they are THAT
nasty. We also killed a bunch of lightning beetles and got 17 glowy balls
that, unfortunately, only glow for about a week. We sold them.

We went back to a room with 6 exits and a giant lizard skull in it. As we
were mapping the corridors, which we quite labyrinthine, something came up and
slammed Browork in the head (at the back of the party), nearly dropping him.
When he turned, there was a shape fleeing, something giant-like.

We tried to follow it, and then, sure enough, it jumped us from behind
again, clocking Zero quite badly, and retreating. We tried to track
around, and we switched the good fighters to the back of the party. But to
no avail. We retreated to a cavern to heal up. Then we marched back and
when we were attacked again, we chased after the creature, Standish and his
dogs in the lead, Halacar and Duran following, and Browork and Zero
bringing up the rear. So of course, Browork and Zero were attacked. The
thing chose to swing at Browork, and hit for much less damage when it
didn't have surprise. It was some sort of minotaur creature. Browork
swung his hammer and tapped it once, and it fled. Everyone came running
back, but the creature was long gone.

Wandering around, the back of the party was attacked AGAIN. Standish and
Halacar were there this time, and Standish did a number on the creature,
though he sustained damage in the process. It fled, bleeding profusely.
We followed it, and as we were tracking, we bumped into a fully healed minotaur
wielding a flail! There was a brutal fight, but it was over quickly enough,
and the creature went down.

Behind it was a strange throne room. There was a chest behind the throne
containing about 400 pp, and a pit with two troglodytes and an orc in it,
writhing in weird flames, but not burning. We lowered a rope, which was
unaffected by the fire, and one of the creatures climbed out... and attacked!

It was undead, a juju zombie. Our cleric was able to tell us that such zombies
result from a magical device draining someone's life energy. Its movement was
rapid and violent, unlike a normal zombie, but we had little trouble disposing
of it, preferring not to find out what would happen if we were hit by it.
Standish cut it to pieces, and Browork hurled holy water. We pulled the other
two out, on at a time, and killed them as well.

Our thought was that this evil throne somehow consumed creatures to
regenerate the minotaur. In fact, the whole room was identified by Duran as a
temple to the demon Bephomet, commonly worshipped by minotaurs.

We headed back home, and got some treasure. The mace turned out to be a
footman's mace +2, which Halacar then failed to trade for a falchion
+2. Megan, Nass, and Duran trained to 4th level, going to 15, 8, and 29 hp
respectively.

Zero decided that perhaps it was finally time to retire, since it was only a matter
of time before he perished, and went to live in his parents' garage. He kept his
magic sword, but sold the new party cleric his Ring of Blinking. The cleric was a
vicious half-orc named Skrag who wielded the horseman's mace and shield. So, he naturally
picked up the +4 mace to use. We briefly contemplating killing the shambling mound
we had found in our first adventure, but were discouraged after some research because
it required piercing weapons to affect (spear, short sword), which we were critically
short on. So, we decided to continue our explorations elsewhere.

We found a new cave, quite distant in the mountains, and very treacherous
to reach. Inside, we found a mushroom forest that shrieked when we entered
the middle of it. There were clearly weird things in it that avoided
us. Something even leapt high over us at one point. But nothing
attacked. In another room, we battled against five Shadows, successfully,
though several party members were weakened from the encounter, and gained a
potion as treasure. But when we went back to sleep, Halacar found two bite
marks on his neck! He suffered no ill effects. Could his vampire buddy
still be following us? (It was unclear at this point whether the "vampire" was
mobile, or restricted in movement between locales, and the new folks didn't
really understand what this was all about.)

We wandered into another mushroom forest. There was a weird noise, and
suddenly a lofted boulder came crashing down on Nass, killing him
instantly. We tried to get out of there, but there was nothing that could
be done for Nass.

We decided to kill whatever it was after we healed up. So we camped in the
room where we had killed the Shadows, because it had only the one entrance and appeared
defensible. Oops. We were in the middle of a spell shift when Skrag was found dead.
He had two bite marks on his neck that he had gained within 15 minutes of being checked by
the fighters on guard. He had also been completely dehydrated and turned into a dried husk
during that time.

Dispirited, we fled home. The potion turned out to be Firebreathing, which
is useful.

To replace Skrag and Nass, we gained Rex, a human warrior-turned-cleric who fought with
the horseman's mace to much greater effect than Skrag, and Neb, short for
Nebuchadnezzar, a very odd critter. He was a crossbow specialist with the ability
to target shoot almost anything, and he had studied anatomy extensively so that he
could nearly kill even Standish or Halacar with one lucky shot. Rex bought Zero's Ring
of Blinking from the party, which had inherited it from Skrag, and Neb
came with Bracers AC 6/10.

We decided that the thing with the boulders was going down. Hard.

We reentered the dungeon, very steamed. As we made our way toward the
mushroom forest, a boulder was lobbed and it hit Neb, but it was fairly
cosmetic damage. While Duran and the melee warriors battled giant lizards, Rex tossed
a Light spell up ahead, and revealed some kind of real giant!

The giant was holding a large tuba, and blew it! We wondered what that
might summon, but nothing came to aid the giant.

After the lizards were defeated, Halacar and Standish charged the giant, running down the
long corridor to where the giant was camped with boulders. Duran hurled several daggers
into its hide. Neb fired his crossbow and the bolt landed with a satisfying
thunk, causing the giant to flinch visibly. It hurled a boulder at Neb,
but missed. The ceiling was quite high so as to allow the boulder to loft
in a smooth arc. It still didn't explain how the giant had seen us in the
mushroom forest though.

Neb took careful aim with a second loaded crossbow and prepared to fire. The giant,
realizing who the threat was, hurled a boulder at Neb again. The thief saw
the boulder coming and realized his doom was upon him and released his
targeted bolt. The projectiles passed each other in the air...

Neb was buried in a heap of stone, crushed lifeless. The barbed bolt thudded
into the giant's stomach, causing it to yell painfully.

Standish arrived, and Halacar was in hot pursuit. A concealed pit opened
up and Standish dropped into it, Halacar skidding to a halt.

Standish downed half a potion of Levitation and rose out of the pit to
attack the giant on the far side. Halacar could only look on
helplessly. Halacar gave Standish a strong push to fly across the pit
toward the giant... who swung its club, bashing Standish backward like a
baseball, Halacar diving out of the way to avoid being hit by Standish.

Browork dropped a Cure on Standish as he advanced, and tried a Hold Person
on the giant, to no avail. It also resisted Megan's Light spell.

Megan ran forward and dropped a Spider Climb on Halacar. Standish pushed
forward and nailed the giant, then took a large hit once again, but Halacar
climbed over the pit and stabbed the giant multiple times. Standish was
bleeding, however. The giant hopped back once again, and we ran
forward, a second pit opening up under Standish, but he remained in the air.

Halacar gave Standish another push to fly across the pit toward the giant...
who swung its club, bashing Standish, Halacar again taking cover. Standish was now
bleeding profusely.

Brigling had tried to cross the pit, but had fallen, to his dismay,
twice. He was still trying to get out of the pit to let Browork and Rex
across so they could help. Rex tried in vain to use the Ring of Blinking to cross the
pit, but it kept Blinking him away from the pit rather than across it, but he kept
trying.

Standish could stand no longer, having hurt the giant considerably, and
Halacar had climbed across. The giant smashed Halacar, leaving him
bleeding but still standing. Halacar stabbed the giant once. Standish
approached the clerics. The giant missed the little halfling, and then
without warning, suddenly fell from wounds done by Standish!

With relief we collapsed. We camped on the far side of the pit, in the
chamber that the giant had been retreating to. And sadly, once again, the
vampire showed up. Megan had several marks on her neck and was ill, but
alive. We retreated and vowed not to return to that cave until we could
track down the vampiric monster.

The take was a non-magical tuba. Expensive though! We sold it for about 5000
gp. Megan snagged Neb's Bracers of Defense to gain a respectable defense
(along with her ring +1).

Rex and Duran stayed behind for the rest of the adventure, and we didn't
try to replace the fallen Neb, so just Standish, Brigling, Halacar,
Browork, and Megan set out to slay some bugbears.

We had seen a few arrow slits where we had been shot and retreated before,
and we knew there were bugbears around there. We snuck up invisibly and
sent Brigling along to find an entrance to the lair. Unfortunately, he had
to carry a visible torch to do this, and the couple of bugbears in the
antechamber spotted it. They hurled at the darkness ("I attack the darkness!"),
and Brigling was hit once, but when the party came around to attack, the bugbears
had already fled. Since this was sort of what we intended anyway, we shrugged and
Brigling went about his search.

Brigling found a door with a secret catch near the arrow slit.

Camping, healing up, we went back in, Brigling still invisibly leading the
way, Browork covering as much of the party as he could with the +3
shield. A large number of shots came at Browork, and they all missed or
clanged off the cleric's armor. The party charged, Brigling opening the
door, to reveal several bugbears with heavy crossbows.

What followed was a slaughter of immense proportions. Standish killed the
four or five with heavy crossbows with the help of a Sleep spell from
Megan, while Halacar held the corridor against the oncoming rush, one at a
time, of bugbear warriors. Then Standish slid past Halacar and began
killing bugbears. He brought down a dozen or so very quickly, but was
hampered by hurled spears and was forced to retreat for healing.

Brigling had killed the sleeping bugbears except for one, which he tied up
for questioning.

Halacar stood and dueled. Would exhaustion take over? The poor halfling
was nearly unkillable, especially with an Aid spell, but his offense left
something to be desired. Slowly the bugbears went down, lines of them,
barely scratching their diminutive opponent. Megan reloaded crossbows and
handed them to Standish, who was surprisingly effective with them as he
fired over Halacar.

The battle lasted a good 25 minutes (250 segments!), when finally the
bugbear leader came out. He smashed Halacar, who bowed out of the way for
Standish to clobber the thing. With Halacar gliding back in to take the
hits, and Standish to do the damage, we managed to kill the thing without
too much trouble, though Browork was out of spells and Standish even used his
Healing potion.

After the leader went down, the lesser combatants arrived and were
systematically slaughtered. In all, about 50 bugbears lay dead in the
corridor. Not one escaped.

The treasure was about 200 gp after armor costs (oops, darn full plate),
and an evil magic sword which hates lycanthropes. We turned it in to
Browork's church for a small reward. We also sold the
bugbear into the arena (he told us little of interest). His gladiatorial
name is "Smusher the Bugbear" and he has not yet fought any opponent.

Browork trained to 6th level, gaining 5 hp to stand at 41. Brigling
trained to 7th level, gaining 3 hp to stand at 39!

So the survivors look like this:

Halacar, 6th level fighter, 65 hp
Standish, 6th level fighter, 63 hp
Browork, 6th level cleric, 41 hp
Brigling, 7th level thief, 39 hp
Duran, 4th level woodsman, 29 hp
Rex, 3rd level cleric/1st level fighter, 24 hp
Megan, 4th level mage, 15 hp

New Obituaries:

Skrag, 3rd level cleric, 22 hp
Neb, 3rd level thief, 18 hp
Nass, 4th level illusionist, 8 hp

Last but not least, the inevitable Crusher the Goblin combat. Crusher went
to battle against an human convict with a club and leather armor. Crusher
came out in his full combat regalia, some chain mail and a short
sword. They battled endlessly, neither able to hit anything smaller than a
large house, but eventually Crusher was victorious with a single nasty stab!

His record is now improved to double digits, 10-0!

Hope you enjoyed our adventures! More to come in the New Year!

Joel/Halacar/Browork with some minor editing from Kyle/Zero/Duran/Skrag/Rex