Kiss My Knits!

Previously on the Three Stooges D&D:

Our party was in town and had just discovered some interesting tidbits. There have been kidnappings and a bugbear raid. The baron’s daughter has been taken and he has offered a generous reward for her recovery. Sully the tavernkeeper reported that the daughter was lat seen having a drink, but that he lost sight of her in the last raid. Our party is currently in the tavern basement, which seems to have more to it than meets the eye.

There are crates stacked against the west and south walls. We move the crates away from an outline on the west wall, only to discover that the outline encompasses the entire wall. Fake wall? Hm. Palin (that’s me) listens to it and rolls a 4 (that’s out of a possible 20) so she only hears her own heartbeat. Which, considering how our adventures go, is still rather reassuring.

We move all the crates except the final three, which won’t budge. They’re in a configuration like this: _ – _ Stacked like a triangle.

Our Elf, Val opens one crate and discovers a big gear. Maybe for opening the wall. He opens a second crate.

DM: As Val pops open the crate, a loud *whooosh* erupts as he is engulfed in flame.
Me: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!! I mean, “oh dear.”
DM: Val takes 3 damage
Me: It’s funny because it’s not me.
Val: Val runs around the room grabbing onto the nearest thing to him…which happens to be Palin.
Me: AAAAAH!!!

Palin falls on the Elf and smothers the flames. Just another day on fire. Must be Tuesday.

Turns out there’s another gear in the crate. And in the third crate, which also squirts acid at Val. This time, he dodges. Good job.

So, we have three gears, the bottom two of which connect to the floor, which has a circular outline around the gears. We agree that the wall should pivot, but we’re missing some mechanism to make it do so. To search for it, we move all the crates that we previously moved to the west wall over to the east wall. It’s like we’re playing medieval Tetris.

We uncover a lever. Everybody except Palin and the Elf go hug the west wall, which hopefully will pivot. We decide that two of us will stay behind and pull the lever again in a minute, after they’ve had a chance to look around, before they have a chance to get killed.

We pull the lever, the wall does pivot, and nobody is squished. We ascertain that things on the far side look fairly normal – a passage leading downward to a cavern, so we all go on. The Elf, our best spotter, doesn’t join us. I’m fairly sure he stayed behind to loot some of the tavernkeeper’s treasure that we found. Instead Torkal, the other Dwarf, leads us. In fact, he leads us right over a trip wire.

Vaeldriil: Any of the rest of us able to spot it, or is it pretty much tripped out?
DM: Unfortunately, he tripped it. You now spot the arrows that are flying at you from either side, however.

GREAT. We all got skewered. Nobody died, though, thankfully. We staggered on and found an underground river and a dock. There were signs of a struggle, so we think the baron’s daughter might have been brought this way. Sadly, there was no boat.

We took another turn to explore more of the cavern and run into one of the kidnappers, whom we manage to kidnap. Actually, our Elf manages to slip a rope around his neck and choke him as he’s leaving a room where his compatriots are hanging out. We try to subdue him without alerting his buddies. While he is being choked, we carry him away while beating the tar out of him. Torkal finally manages to smack him on the back of the head with the pommel of his sword and knock him out. Poor guy. I imagine him saying to himself, “only one day from retirement… I’m getting too old for this.”

We get ready to rush into the room to take on the remaining smugglers. There are five of them – four human smugglers and one Dwarven female named Gerti. There are not five of us. We are outnumbered.

We decide, for once, to try talking out the situation. We all make miserable rolls and they are not fooled by our many, many lies. Finally,

Torkal: Torkal stands there for a long moment, then says, “You’re not buying any of this, are you? Should we just fight, now?”
DM: A smuggler says to Gerti, “Fry em?” Gerti nods.

Gerti the pyromancer chooses to attack… me! Of course. Gerti casts ‘scorching ray’ directly at me for 13 damage. Enraged, I hurl my axe at her, nicking her for a whopping one point of damage. The next round, Gerti casts ‘grease’ in front of me and I fall right on my butt. On my next turn I try to get up and fail, falling back on my rump. Smuggler 1 attacks me and misses. Smuggler 2 attacks me and misses. Seriously, it’s like I’m a Dwarf pinata and they’re a bunch of blindfolded five year olds.

Next round, I finally regain my footing and the smugglers start choosing more appropriately. It took us more than an hour to bumble our way to a resolution. Through it all, Gerti the Dwarf managed to stay alive, set things on fire, and generally taunt us. We just stunk so bad. Finally at one in the morning we killed her. I am pleased to say that I got the final blow, knocking her back into an open mine shaft. Unfortunately three of her henchmen were still alive. It took us until 1:30 to kill the last of them. In that time, our live hostage apparently got free. Who knows where he might be?

Screw it, it was time to camp and rest.
Next session, we divvy up the treasure. Tune in next time for the special bugbear guest star – and for more flaming action!