Kiss My Knits!

We picked up at the end of last session, but having rested, because we got pretty winded and impaled during that last session. We found some footlockers in the room and looted them.

Veracity looks at the map and observes the cavern that we’re are in, the city above us, the river underneath is marked in dotted lines. At the edge of the map is the symbol of a ship and to the north east of the map is what appears to be an island.

Val the rogue finds a manifest that the smugglers had. Great! Another clue in our search for the baron’s daughter. It lists names of prisoners and amounts. It is at this point that we realize that we NEVER ASKED WHAT THE BARON’S DAUGHTER’S NAME WAS. Fantastic.

Fortunately we know he was Baron Grellus and there’s a P. Grellus on the manifest with the amount “120 platinum” next to it. Note to non D&D players: that’s a lot of money. Logic suggests that we must be looking for P.

On impulse, Palin decides to look through the door that Gerti fell through, the better to spit on her corpse. In doing so, she springs a fire trap. Of course.

GM: Palin takes 12 points of Fire damage. Gerti has had her revenge.
Me: Why, God, why?
Veracity: Veracity hauls out the singed, charred, crumbling and tattered remains of her bedroll and, with the ease of long practice, puts out the fire on Palin.

Once I’m no longer smoldering, we decide to send Torkal down the stairs and Val the rogue down the now un-trapped pit. He has a spider climb scroll so he decides to take his chances clambering down.

And then a miracle happened. We all started rolling 20s. Torkal hid like a ninja when he went down the stairs and was unnoticed by the two guards there. Val climbed down the shaft like a monkey and then we managed to pull him back up successfully. It should have been deathapalooza, but it wasn’t. It was like we had already sucked up all the bad luck for the night.

Armed with the confidence that comes from good rolls, we decided to rush down the stairs and take the two guards. The Dwarves, Torkal and Palin, raised their weapons and rushed downstairs… only to have the stairs collapse into a ramp. We went sliding into each other like sugared-up kids playing tag in the mud. The Dice Gods had been toying with us.

Two of us stayed upright to try to fight the guards, who were coming at those of us flailing around on the floor. It’s a human slaver carrying a whip and a bugbear smuggler, barreling at us full speed.

Fortunately, the bugbear rolls badly.

GM: The bugbear attempts to bind Torkal and stumbles over into the mix. He becomes prone and loses the round.

They’re like the “us” of slavers.

Val pours oil over the bugbear and our mage Alenghi casts burning hands. We are all afraid because remember, the bugbear is rolling around on the ground with the rest of us. However, the spell is successful. The bugbear is ignited! They really ARE the “us” of slavers!

Torkal, covered in oil, sliding around in a mass of other party members, being whipped by a guy in leather, finally rises.

Oh, stop it. He STANDS UP and hits back. What did you think I meant? He gets in a pretty good strike, too. I, on the other hand, try to stand up but slip on some oil. By the skin of my teeth, I am not set on fire by the flaming bugbear. Incidentally, The Flaming Bugbears will be my next band name.

We’re all still oiled up and shooting and thrusting at things and flaming and sliding around and the double and triple entendres are flying around fast and furious. We could probably have followed every line with “that’s what she said!” and it couldn’t have been any worse.

Aleanghi the mage casts ray of frost and manages to hit the slaver, completely icing his leg and causing it to shatter into a million tiny pieces. He slumps over dead. The flaming bugbear is still in the mix. He grapples Veracity and thrusts at her. When you imagine that it’s late at night and we’re all covered in oil, you can see how these things look. He wounds her, but then Torkal thrusts right back into the bugbear and wounds it.

Everybody else is rocking as they try to finish off the bugbear. On my turn, I just barely manage to get back on my feet. Go me.

Everybody’s making a dent in it, but the bugbear is taking forever to go down. Finally we’re down to this:

Torkal: Torkal kicks the bugbear in the junk.

It worked. The bugbear keeled over dead. Yay!

You hear some coughing from nearby, followed by a few cheers and pleas for help. There are captives in cells surrounding us. We’re heroes! We rescue the first family, and in a touching moment, Palin offers them the leg of mutton she had stuffed into her backpack earlier. Good deeds are their own reward, apparently, because it turns out that the patriarch of the family is Councilman Belcker and he says he’ll remember our kindness and we’ll be rewarded. SCORE! Great note to go out on! We’ll just free the rest of the hostages and go to bed.

Our rogue sets about freeing the rest of the prisoners. Meanwhile, more guards arrive. So much for bed. We get the drop on them and utterly waste the element of surprise. Torkal shouts and alerts them to our presence while completely missing with his hit. I hit him for one point of damage – right in the toe. Our bard also hits for one point of damage in the other toe. Val throws one of the new darts he got from looting the guards. He misses, but it explodes. So now we know he has exploding darts.

Next round. Everybody misses but me, but I hit with my bow for maximum damage. Unfortunately, one of the guards takes a hostage so we have to be much more careful in our combat now.

More guards arrive. We kill one of the original guards and try to get the freed prisoners to take up arms against the hostage taker.

When three more smugglers and a bugbear show up, an epic battle ensues. Epic in the sense that it’s taking aeons to finish. As Val says, “we pinch people to death.”

This went on until 1:30am, at which point the free captives stop checking their watches and pick up swords and enter the fray. I guess it was too much for them. Maybe they were missing Heroes or something.

Finally, at 1:48 in the morning, the former captives beat the bugbear to death. The smuggler was knocked out by Val and tied up so that we can question him.

We all leveled and get to think about feats and multiclassing – another day! It’s time for bed!

Next time: We come this close to not sucking. Tune in again – it’ll be shorter next time, I promise!