Into the dragons lair (Forg. realms)

[Dwarfi]

My first time as a DM and we picked a rather easy to manage story even though it seems to be rather old and somewhat between 2nd and 3rd edition.^^

The Group: ~Lv9
Borasch Ironshield: Fighter- a typical dwarf, grim, silent, a little cold and greedy. But very strong.
Levya: A good female human cleric of Tyr. Focussing more on the war aspect, but always tries to do some good in the overall pretty greedy group.
Elster: A male human rougue/ranger: He likes to spin his web and use his social skills. In fights he quickly gets in danger as he likes to run ahead of the group.
Rana: A female human barbarian: Not stupid, but not very bright either. She loves to charge into battle with the dwarf. Once she bought a totally overprized blanket made of a dragon welp and now she has the idea of somehow reviving and befriending said welp.
Reigam: A male elf wizzard. He is an unpredictable and chaotic guy (although he declares himself as one of the good guys), even when things could be solved with piece he likes to just throw a fireball in to get the first attack. The dwarf thinks that he is evil.

Story: The group already discovered the secrets of undermountain and are now the heroes of the city.
After the group left the mountain they decided to part for 1 year to visit the elfen university in silvermoon, train, buy stuff and all that.
Thats where we start.

SESSION1: TO CORMYR ! Meet the Freedomwarriors
Elster tries to get into the thiefes guild now and has to get in good contacts with some nobles of the city to proofe himself of some worth to the guild.
Said noble is Lord Vaylan. After some research he finds out that he is from Cormyr and likes to pray in the local temple or Tyr. Which is fitting as Elster just enters together with Levya, who is a little sceptical about the sudden "faith" of the rougue.
They manage to approach Lord Vaylan and Levya quickly sympathises with him as Cormyr is her birth place and is now eager to hear news from her home country.
Sadly Lord Vaylan has to tell her of the downfall of Cormyr, the country was raided by goblins and the kind Azoun IV is nod dead, as well as his first born daughter.

After the first shock Levya offers her help and wants to travel to Cormyr as fast as possible. She gets the option as Lord Vaylan asks her to escort one of his merchants tracks to his sister in cormyr. (Who is a low noble/ merchant as well) Levya agrees and takes a letter with her for Lady Kestrel Vaylan and her husband.
Elster keeps in contact with the local nobles and soon gets accepted by the thiefes guild. ( gets a ring as a symbol)

Levya quickly summons her old friends and together they begin their travel to Comyr by horse.
On the way they speak with the merchants they escort.
It seems cormyr was attacked by an army of goblins led by a huge dragon and some magical creatures. Most of the citys have been raided and the purple dragons (royal knights) have their hands full with fighting them.

The travel is quite as nothing spectacular happens. The dwarf feels sick riding on the wagon.

Reaching The north eastern city of Cormyr Arabel, the group discovers that  the city has been attacked too. Some smoke and soldier indicate that it happened recently. They ask the knights about it and gather some informations about the attacks. They want to know about Lady Kestrel Vaylan too and are shocked to hear that her husband died in the recent attack.
After escorting the caravan through the streets they finally meet with the lady at her house. The group has a little trouble to get past the maid as they are heavy armed.
They give the lady the letter and hear her story:
The dragon Nalavara that attacked Cormyr has been slayn by the king though both died.
His 2nd daughter is regent as her sister had a son (Azoun V) who is the rightful king. A lot of low nobles mistrust the regent and formed the freedom warriors to fight them.
A lot of nobles and adventures now seek the dead dragons treasure, so does Lady Kestrel Vaylan.
She asks the group to find the treasure so that she can rebuild the city and support the regent. 1/4 of the treasure will be the groups share.
As no one knows about where in the mountains the hort is, a lot of adventurerer race to find it.

Lady Kestrel tells the group that an old friend of her husband owns a map, that leads to the cave. They are to meet with him in eveningstar (30miles west)
As proof she gives them a signet ring to show to her friend, names Gurrand.

The group buys some horses and then wants to leave quickly. But as they move through the city they see some "freedom warriors" steal a merchants wagon and hitting the driver with a club.
Led by Levya the group instantly charges in. (the mage is not using spells, as he tries to hide his magic and because of the high number of bystanders) From an alley some reinforcements appear but are quickly defeated.

---------------END of S1

[Dwarfi]

Session 2: Evil clerics, monster tigers in weat fields and taxcollectors
Elster is not with the group this time.
After helping the hit driver the group sees that they are not the only adventurers in the city. A lot of groups are starting to move out and so our group decides that its time to go as well.
With the help of their newly bought horses the travel is rather easy until about 10 miles.
On a hill in a more narrow way between two small woods they see a number of riders waiting.
The group decides two approach by foot and the cleric greets the men.
It is a group of tax collectors that take money for travel through their lords land. they are not very kind, but the group pays and goes on.

some miles further the group sees smoke coming from a nearby farm, not far off the street. Again without the horses they go in and see a person standing beteen fire. From a burning house screams are heared. Its a cleric of talos and thanks to his summoned monster  he is already aware of the group so he starts the encounter.
Rana (barb) is a little ahead of the group, when a giant dire tiger attacks out of a field. He manages to wound the barbarian, but fails the grapple.
The evil Cleric  casts a flame strike on 3 of the others. Except for the cleric everyone manages the reflex save.
Now the battle starts as Reigam casts 2 scorching rays on the enemy, but finds out that he is pretty well prepared against fire spells- a lot of damage just vanishes. Our cleric and barbarian attack the tiger, but dont do enough manage to kill the beast. The tiger now attacks the cleric and this time manages to grapple him, with its claws and bite he manages to wound the cleric seriously. The evil cleric casts blindness on the mage, but fails to a miracle 20 in the fortitude save. The dwarf leap attacks into the grapple check and luckily hits and kills the tiger.
Now the attention goes to the cleric, who tries to defensive cast a blade barrier, but fails again in the concentration check, shortly after that he gets killed by the melees.

The poeons in the farm house are saved and extremely gratefull, though poor. Because the group has no spells to extinct the fire the sadly have to watch it burn down.
Another group of adventurers pass by which remembers the our heroes that they are in a hurry.

Back on the street they quickly get ahead of the other group again and after some whiles reach a hill way between two woods, where another group of tax collectors waits.
These guysare bandits and not skilled enough to fool the group. They get more and more angry as they want the money and finally start attacking. Two snipers from the woords open the battle with arrow shots and hit the mage. After a first fireball of the mage 7 of a total of 14 bandits are dead. The cleric stuns another group with a sonic burst and the dwarf jumps into one of the woods and kills of one sniper. Now Regam (Wiz) decided thats its time to hone his sword skills and challenged the last remaining sniper to a duel. Both were so bad that it took a lot of 1HP hits to finally kill the last bandit.

Shortly after this the we finally reach eveningstar. The eastbridge of the city is the entrance to the partly destoyed city. Two young men welcome us at the bridge- Levya asks for the man whe are supposed to meet and where to find him. The "welcoming hand"-In  is right behind the bridge so its not much of a way.
Its already late evening as the group enters. They eat and drink and finally ask for Gurrand, the man Lady Kestrel told us out to meet.

In a silent room in the back of the inn we finally meet him, obviously a once strong warrior, now aged and rather weak. As we tell him who we are and show him the ring he becomes confused. With a sad look on his face he tells us that two days ago another group of adventurers visited him. They were led by a strong, red haired man named Doxon who fooled Gurran with a well made copy of the ring and so gained the map to the dragons lair.
Hope is not lost, as Gurran manages to somewhat redraw the map. He is very sorry about this and tells us about a mountain man named Valan in Tyrluk. Merchants say that he knows the way to a big goblin stronghold, which is the only idea for the lair we have so far.

As its already late at night the group stays in the inn and wants to leave to Tyrluk in the next morning.

[Dwarfi]

Session 3: Noob adventurers, a demi plane and an epic battle
As the group prepares to leave Eveningstar they are approached by a group of young adventurerers. They try to come with the group to fight and gain honor and fame. But the group tests them by shooting a bow. Actually the leader of the young adventurers wasnt even strong enough to really shoot an arrow. So they fail on that part.
Levya tells them that they can come along, but not as combatants which is not what they wanted to hear, so they rether decline and try their look with a single mage that recently came to eveningstar after loosing her group.

This gets Elsters' attention and he wants to look for said mage, which he finds in the tavern. Its Veya, a female halfelf that whos group was killed by another group, led by a man with red hair.(Doxon) Veya cant really tell Elster much about Doxons group as they were surprised during the night and does not want to go after the dragons' treasure anymore.
but she has some interesting theries about the lair. Her idea is that its not an actual place in Cormyr, but some kinf of extraplanar bag used as a prison for the dragon Nalavare. The goblins from that plane seem to have some kind of interplanar traveling abilities and all the random portals seem to be an effect of different possibilities.
1- The lair is about to collapse 2- the lair is about to manifest in Cormyr 3- the goblins try to manifest a permanent connection between the planes.
It also seems as if its not that difficult to actually enter the lair, but leaving might be difficult. A anchor in cormyr would be useful, which she could do for the group, but she would like to have a strong magical item for it. Like the ring of the barbarian, which can create an anti magic field.
The barbarian denies and so the group is left without an anchor.

After this the group finally leaves for Tyrluk to the west. After a few miles they come across a group of around 32 refugees. People from farms and small villages from the west.
After recieving a little food and money they share some doubtful informations with our group of which some parts seem to be rather unbelievable.
1-The cult of the dragon wants to ressurect Nalavara and searches for her body (Nice idea to implement some of those guys into the story)
2-The Zhentarim have conquered 'Arabel - (False)
3- Shapeshifting goblins raiders appear and disappear all around cormyr (party true- the goblins can open gates but they cant shapeshift)

With this the group continues to the west and comes across an old battlefield. They decide to spent a short amount of time on the field and discover that it must have been more than 1 battle, as the corpses are from all different factions and states of decay. Goblins, knights, milicia...
While they walk the field scavengers flee on sight, while a fog rises on a nearby hill and reveals a cave (obviously a portal). the group hears voices from withing but as the mage is missing at this point no one is able to tell what they are saying or what language it is. The portal closes again.

As there are a lot of good (dead) poeple on the field, Levya prepares a blessing to stop them from raising as undead. On a whim Levya spents a prayer on the group.
Shortly after this the fog appears again and the group quickly heads there, but this time 2 warbands of goblins come out of it and surround the group.
*At this point our mage arrives and casts flame shield on the group*
The goblins use slingshots and swords to attack, which is as ineffective as possible. The prayer reduces the sling shot to a max dmg of 1 point and the flame shield actually deals enough damage to kill every goblin that dares to strike with a sword.
It takes a while until the goblin captains decide that this is suicide and blow a horn for retreat. Most of the goblins escape into the portal they came from, while others scatter in other different directions.

End of S3.

[Dwarfi]

Session 4:Not so scary undead, and "we dont need a guide"

After defeating the goblin army, the group doesnt want to spend much time on the already cramped battlefield to find the very small loot left.
Levya quickly blesses the dead on the field before leaving.

Back to the street and the way to Tyrluk.
It starts to rain and the the group has problems seeing very far and so they see a group of poeple just at the last moment.
They appear to be a group of undead knights of Cormyr(the kingdom) and at first it looks  grim for the group as the barbarian and the mage are missing at this point.
But it turns out, that the wights, have just not enough strg to withstand the turning blows of the cleric.
Who eagerly uses them to turn most of them into fine cumbled dust. Except for 2 undead creatures that are way harder to take down, but dont really oppose much of a thread either.
After some good knowledge checks Levya finds out that the two are Mohrgs.

The rest of the travel to Tyrluk passes without anything noteworthy.
Sadly, Tyrluk has been raided by the goblin armys too and is as good as destroyed. Only a house and the local in are standing.
Between the ruins people have build up small improvised shops and a little near the town, the royal knights have build up emergency tents.
There is some commotion as they are trying to build up at least some houses.
The group is here to find Valan, a guide to the mountains, but doesnt really care about looking for him.
And so they approach the knights commander and offer him help. Sadly there isnt much to do but collecting building materials, food and standing guard.
A little dissapointed, Levya summon a feast for the poeple to do at least some good.

At one of the "shops" Elster meets a female human, in a long blue dress, black hair wearing a longsword at her side.
Typical for Elster, he tries to listen to the talk whitout getting to close, but he doesnt understand the local dialect and so its pretty much pointless. Meanwhile Reigam (our mage) caught up to the group and started to use a detect magic on the blue lady as stealthy as he could. Which concisted of simply standing right behind her.
They were both found out and decided to talk directly to her.
The first thing to notice are her deep blue eyes and her arrogance. She doesnt really insult them but isnt exactly polite either. She looks down on them and with a quick look through the flattened town she pretty much knows everyone of the group. (As there are only townspeople and knights there) Levya tries to cast a zone of truth spell, but doesnt know if it worked, because Marlee, as she is called speaks very carefully and doesnt reveal too much. Just that she is on her own way with an adventuring party which camps somewhere outside the town.

Theres not much to guess here that she is looking for the dragons treasure too, but an offering to join the group almost makes her laugh.
Short after that she makes a swift hand movement and dissapears. A teleportation spell as Reigam is able to tell.

Out of a whim, the group decided not to have any need for a guide and starts its travel to the northern mountains by themself. After 10 miles see a wooden palisade near the street, which contains a slightly opened door. Every signals or calls remain unanswered and so the door is opened. Behind it lies a small town, concisting of a dozen or so wood buildings, a lot of trash, wheels and different stuff are lying around. The only house with a stair in front of it seems to be the one of the eldest or major. A rough search brings up a diary that tells the story of the town. How they were attacked by goblins in the first month of the war, how the knights tried to push them back and how they finally decided to leave. The village seems to have been attacked several times, but the final exodus wasnt rushed, as most things of worth are gone.

The group mounts up again and reaches a parting of the ways. West or north - They decide to go north and after 10 more miles of uneventfullness come to a bigger hill with another wooden pallisade on top of it. This time they get called on the approach. This village isnt inhabited and welcomes the adventurers, as they are eager to hear some news.
After a short talk the group finds out that this is a dead end. The village lies in a small valley, from which only the way back south leads anywhere.
For noe the group is welcome and safe and rests for the night.

The next morning:
At this point the group comes to the conclusion that it may not have been the smartest idea to go without a guide. They remember that Valan the guide travels with the merchants between different citys and towns and was supposed to be for only a short amount of time in Tyrluk.
Reigam decides to teleport 20 miles back to Tyrluk, in the hope that Valan is still there. He concentrates his power, zappes away, but pretty much fails on the attempt. Because of that he takes quite some damage until he manages to manifest somwhere else. - Now he is back in Eveningstar, a town 30m east of Tyrluk. He doesnt have much of a choice and uses another teleportation spell to get there. Finally back in Tyrluk he enters the inn. The service is ugly and not very friendly after he refuses to buy anything, but willed to tell him that Valan has left a couple of hours ago with some merchants.
As Reigam doesnt have any teleportation left to get back to the group he asks if there is a horse seller in town. Which makes the lady laugh as there are only 2 buildings left in town. ^^
But she leads him to the back of the house where an old ugly horse is kept. As she realizes that he has a need for a horse she is willed to sell it for 40 platinum pieces.
Which is way too high for the mage. And so his only option is to cast a fast travel spell on himself.

Meanwhile our group walks around the little village and recognizes some merchant wagons that havent been there last evening. By luck Valan guided the merchants here during the early morning. the group quickly aproaches him and asks for his help. After he hears that they want to go to the goblin fortress he wants 20 platinum pieces right from the start. the group agrees and after talking to the merchants its decided to guide them all back to the empty village 10 miles south in the early afternoon.
Reigam finally reaches the village totally exhausted and get some cures from the cleric until he can keep up again.

The merchants are escorted to the ab. village where they continue alone. our group now turns west  for a couple of miles until they come close to another village.
Valan only wants to take a short break to let the horses drink, but as always there are a lot of people to talk to.
The eldest of the town tells Levya about another group of adventurers led by a strong man with red hair (Doxon) who came here  between one or two days ago. They were not very nice.

Valan is not the patient type and so he quickly prepares to move on. The group already leaves the city when a young man comes running and asks for help in a fearful voice.
Monster have broken into his storeroom/stables at his farm, 3 miles away from the village. He begs form help.
Valan doesnt like this and wants to go on, but the group can persuade him to wait half an hour.

At full speed they reach the farm in a short time and hear eating noises from within one farm building. They kick the door open and rush in. In the dark of the stable the 3 eating ogres are hard to make out but as fat and surprised as they are, they dont stand much of a chance. Two are slain instantly while the other tries to fight back, but fails misarebly.
As a thankful gift the farmer gives the group a fine piece of pork (or as good as it gets in this mountains) and they rush back to the village in time.

END of S4

[Dwarfi]

Session 5: Good buy my pony, jounrey through the mountains and the return of the freedomwarriors

After this short heroic expedition, our group returns to the said village and Valan.
Now the group only consists of 3 Pcs, the Lv10 cleric Levya, Lv9 barb Raya and the Lv9 mage Reigam.
I decided to not play my dwarf actively, as I already have enough to do as a DM. Not to mention that it makes the encounters a lot more interesting.

So the 3 + the guide meet up again and move on their way north.
It is quite a long travel and with every mile they pass, the way becomes more and more of a rocky path.
The closer they get to the mountain tops the harder the path becomes.
Around 1/3 of the way the group finally has to let go of their horses, as they are not able to follow anymore or slow down the group significantly.
Especially Raya has a hard time to let go of her beloved horse.
The group reaches a small plateau, surrounded with trees and some big rocks, where they hide the saddles and rest for the night.
Raya scouts the area using a magical raven statue, that she can awaken to do her biddings.
But the raven gets attacked by an eagle in the air and quickly returns to its master, reporting: Danger in the air.

On the early morning the group moves on, now by foot.
The next path leads through two huge rocks, there was supposed to be a way, butu it seems there was a rockslide and so the way is filled with rocks and stone.
Raya climbs over it, falling two times, but thanks to her featherfall ring nothing happens. As she doesnt like to be between the two rocks, she looks for tracks and finds some wolf tracks, but nothing indicates actual danger.
And so she throws down a rope so that the other can get up safely too.

The path through the mountains is pretty difficult as the way is rocky and narrow. A goblin could fit through and a giant would just step over it, but a human has some problems here.
On 2/3 of the way the group comes across another abandoned village, this must have been one of the first to be destroyed be the goblins and is long lost.
This village is located in a small valley, with 2 other ways to leave, one to the north and another slitely more to north east, its the latter where Valan guides the group.
Here and there are little clusters of snow lying around while the group enters a way between two cliffs, its a narrow and shady area, that finally leads to a cave entrence.
It is around 30 ft wide,10 ft tall and dark.

Levya hears an echo from somewehere that souns like thunder or a roar which makes the whole group pretty nervous.
Valan is not very eager to go anywhere closer to the cave as he describes it as the entrance to a tunnel system used by the goblins. Most ways north come across such tunnels, but this is the biggest one, so he says.
Raja somehow got the idea that a big monster will be coming out of the cave at any minute (because of the "noise" they heard- of which they didnt even know where it came from nor what it was)
and so she climbs on top of the cave entrance ready to strike down on anything that comes out. While Reigam and Levya enter the cave.

Around 30 ft into the cave they suddenly dont hear anything anymore. Not even their own voices.
Right in front of them are two rocks at the cave walls, where two men in armor appear. The one a tall man in a shining armor, the other a ruffian, dirty and armed with a longsword and a hook in place of his 2nd hand.
Now the Pcs are in a bit of a problem, as neither the mage nor the cleric can cast any spells or call for Raya (who is still waiting above the cave entrance)

Behind a rock another man in a robe appears and casts a grease at the ground where the cleric stands.
Reigam moves back until he leaves the silence field and casts a spell to change the place of the hook-man with Raye above the cave.
And so Raya appears inside the enemy lines while the hook man falls 10ft and hit on the ground, now roughly 10ft behind reigam.

The tall man attacks Raya and succesfully disarms her, her magical fire hammer goes flying into the cave. Meanwhile a monster is summoned by a 4th still unknown person, right behind Levya.
Its a howler, trying to attack her, but fails. She then moves out of the grease field and finally leaves the silence zone, now casting one herself.
Now there are two silence zones, leaving only a 5ft narrow way between them to cast.

The enemy mage moves into the non silence path, gets an aoo from raya, which overcomes his displacement spell and hits him with her fists.
He then casts a haste effect on his group, which fails from the concentration check.

the tall man now attacks Levya and tries to get her holy cleric symbol of Tyr away from her. But on a natural 20 def roll fails.
The hook guy stands up, Raya draws her bastardsword and attacks the enemy mage, but except for 1 hit fails to overcome the defensive spell. The enemy mage moves away from the barbarian and drinks a potion, after which he becomes invisible. Reigam now shoots a fireball inside the cave, frying the tall one, our barbarian and the enemy mage, as a smoking corpse indicates.
The howler charges Levya but still fails to do damage.

Here the whole thing became a little messy, as Raya decided to use her ring to create a anti magical field. Now there are 2 silence zones and a 15ft radius anti magic field in between. Removing magical items, incoming spells and the summoned howler.
The hook man attacks Raigam, trips him and starts to slash at him, barely doing any damage with his hook. Levya moves to the cave entrance to help her friend in need, while Raya fights the tall one. Who now uses Robilars gambit to trip her on her charge attack. The 4th person now enters the fight as she tried to somehow get out of the silence zone before. Its a woman with a morningstar and a wip. Her spells are rather useless now.

While Reigam and Levya fight off the hook, who concistantly trips the mage and manages to land one or two nice blows on him, the situation for the barbarian becomes tricky.
She has boots of spring, but to use thhe haste effect she has to deactivate her ring, which costs a SA. leaving her only with the option to stand up or move on the ground.
She goes for the 2nd, hasts herself again and moves a couple of feat away from the two enemys.

The tall one again tries to disarm the barbarian but fails this time, the woman behin him uses a cure spell on him.
The hook is defeated and the attention moves back to the others.
At this point the 1st silence zone fades off and Levya uses a sonic blast, which blinds the tall one for one round.
Raya is trying to stand up, attacks the tall one and gets tripped again.
The attackers now scream at the group, which identifies them as the freedom warriors.

The wip girl him casts a chaos hammer on the cleric and the mage. Typically the will save is no match for the clerics +19 will save, but the mage fails and gets slowed.

The enemys hack at the barbarian, a few spells get exchanged until a sleep spell is casts on the tall one.
Now Raya finally manages to get back on her feet again and attacks. She critically hits the tall one, doing around 70 damage and instantly slays him.
The remaining wip girl, gets panicked as she is the only survivor now, and seeing her depending doom, drops a 3rd level spell to cast wounds on the barbarian who just killed her leader.
Shortly after that the wip girl gets killed too and the long encounter is finally over, leaving a few rule questions to check and a lot of loot and EXP.

After everything noteworthy is looted the group notices that the mountain guide Valan is gone. Obviously for quite a while already.

END of S5

As a DM I somehow have to find a way to remove at least a little of the equipment, as I am afraid that they become too powerful.
They are just Lv10 and there are barely any saves left they dont manage. But what really bothers me is that stupid anti magic ring. I dont knwo why it had to drop in the previous adventure, but it definately takes away a lot of action in the encounters. Ther barb becomes imune to magic and the group casters cant to shit as long as he is around.

[Dwarfi]

Session #5: Its a dragon!

After the last encounter the group goes deeper into the cave and find out that its empty and a dead end.
Several search checks later and some discussions about the overweight loot (which is now hidden under some rocks in the small valley) the group is finally sure that its really just a cave and not the entrance to the dragons lair. The cleric uses a lot of heal charges on a wand to make the group ready again.

With some tracking skills the group follows Valan back into a valley a couple of miles back and is able to follow him north into another pass.
They find several tracks and a couple of slain adventurers, which resemble the lv1 rookies from eveningstar.
At the entrance of a big valley, they see a pole with a person bound to it. It seems to be Valan. He looks beaten up and starts screaming as the group comes closer.
A second later the group gets hit by a magical wave, a symbol of pain was painted on Valans back. The mage doesnt make the check and so both are screaming in pain.
Which doesnt last long, as the cleric quickly dispells it, though the aftereffects last for 1 hour.

Now a group of 4 people appear on a closeby hillside, a woman in a blue dress (Marlee from Tyrluk) calls for the cleric and wants to talk to him. (The others are a bard, an evil cleric and a big barbarian) She is as unfriendly as ever but she doesnt seem to be too eager to fight and wants the group to just leave or follow her as minions- She would take all magical items from the hort.
Meanwhile an evil old man starts casting something while a half elf bard charms the rest of the group with a nice music until Marlees talk is over.

She demonstrates her power by casting a destroy water spell on one of the group. (Here I decided to let the group roll- the lowest roll gets it) In this case it hits the rougue And except for some  ale every potion gets destroyed. Our Cleric attacks the bard and the ini round starts.
The cleric makes a successful grapple against Marlee, which can teleport herself out of it. The evil cleric gets a load of arrows by Elster which totally destroys his monster summon spell. Shortly after that he gets killed by our barbarian. (I should have casted invisibility on him and then start casting)

Our mage shoots an enhanced fireball on the evil barb, which makes his reflex save and enters a berserker rage frenzy on his round. He attacks our barbarian and deals some damage.
Some attacks are exchanged and the bard runs for his life, which makes marlee transform into her true form. A young adult blue dragon.
Now the fun begins. The group basically fights an undying frenzy berserker and a blue dragon, that now flys over a close by cliff. The bard becomes invisible and never returns.

The berserker throws one hit after another and deals some nice damage over time, even a mighty crity from our barbarian cant stop him and the caster dont really have something usefull either.
Meanwhile Marlee lands closeby (too close I would say in retrospec) and shoots a lighting through 3 members.
Elster makes his refl and doesnt get any damage at all, Reigam gets half damage and the cleric gets it all. ~47 damage
The group gety cocky and attacks the dragon, eating an aoo. The dragon tries a grapple on the cleric and fails miserably while getting aoos. ( I could have played that close combat part better)

She flys off again and makes a fly by attack on the cleric again, while the other start to get desperate - casting invisibility and mirror images.
The berserker slashes against a mirror image while the group hears the roar of a mountain giant. (which is actually a fake by marlee)

At this point the match is already overtime and so I decide not to kill the group here, as Marlee doesnt want to get any more damage than 1/2 her HP. She uses her giants-bluff to force the group to retreat. Our cleric removes his magical swords which attacked the dragon as a sign of good will. Marlee tells them to leave the berserker to her - the group runs to the cave and the dragon makes a dive grapple on the berserker as soon as they are out of range.

Now the group finally entered the goblin cave, which is actually a 1-way portal to the city of grodd. A giant goblin city on a demi plain. This is a plane with some difficult rules. Or better the outer caves of it. To spice this up some more, I will let the Pcs make a roll on the planar teleport, if they roll less than 10 they loose 1 HD permanently ;P

----
Result: I still make a lot of stratecical mistakes, like the evil cleric right at the start. I pretty much knew that the bard would be useless so I put the frenzy berseker in.
Even without a rest before, the group dealt a hell of damage and was pretty much imune to any checks.

But I will see if I can use Marlee later again. She might enter the cave 1 or 2 days later. As she has a really great bluff and diploma check + polymorph she should have a really easy time walking through the city of grodd.
 

[Dwarfi]

Seassion 6: Gobby and Grodd (This was a very long evening)

The group tumbled into the cave while fleeing the dragon (I let them roll if they get  any EXP at all for this but they did) and are suddenly warped into darkness.
They have just entered the demi plane of Grodd. The surprising journey was hard to bear and everyone makes a roll or looses 1 HD. The mage and the barb fail, while the barb rolls a lucky 1 the mage looses a full HD. Only thanks to his LV up he doesnt loose all of it. The group is shocked to hear that this damage is permanent.
(From this point on the group starts to fear every damage as permanent ^^)

Other strange things occur, the anti magic ring of the barb makes a strange noise and act funny when activated, the cleric has a very weak connection to his deity and the light effects seem to be very reduced (1/2) After healing and making light they explore the surroundings and see that there is no cave entrance behind them. Thisis the start where they think that they are not in Kansas Cormyr anymore. I let them rest and they start exploring the cave.

Our ranger moves forward looking for traps and sees a feint moving shadow in the light, hears a wing flap and then it dissapears.
The group is alarmed  and a couple of minutes later they come across "it" again and with a lucky shot the rogue kills the shadow bird. (It didnt even have a CR XD)

In a bigger cave room, they explore a big amount of mushrooms, some very large, other more like yellow moss. Some have been cut down and transported away as they find a couple of goblin tracks. Now they hear a screaming noise, which leads them to a small goblin fighting in the darkness against an invisible enemy. Our cleric decides to go to the rescue and after some strange occurings finally magages to kill the shadow wolf with a mighty smight. (total overkill)
They have found Gobby the outcast, a strange and a little debile but likeable Goblin. He totally falls for the cleric and loves his new rescuer. He doesnt like the others as much though, after some nasty words he seriously dislikes the "evil man" which is the rogue. The mage doesnt get much love either. XD

Gobby is a great source of information about the cave and the goblin city of Grodd. They get to know about the generals fighting for power, the creatures in the outer caves and some kind of stone circles in some caves. Gobby refuses to go where the shadows come from, which creates the idea in the players mind that the goblins of grodd face an immediate invasion from the shadow plane and are in dire need. (Actually the shadow creatures are random encounters in the outer caves and the soldiers of grodd dont have much problems keeping the few out of the city)
And so gobby leads them to another circle with runes, after some studying and checks it appears to be an ancient poartal to the astral plane. Pretty much broken and unusable

Now they enter the great cave where the city is located (around 6x6 miles big) they pass a watchtower in safe distance and come to gobbys hut a little outside the city.
Gobby gives the cleric mushroom soup with bugs, the cleric doesnt want it and so gobby spits into the bowl and gives it to the "evil men". ;P Gobby gives the cleric a ring of friendship, of which he keeps anotehr one, both wear one of them and are connected. They can call Gobby now with he help of this ring. He draws them a really rough map, but enough to know the biggest streets and towers in the outer city parts. Gobby isnt allowed to enter the higher city planes.

The goal: The group wants to find out more about the shadows and so decides to go and capture a shadow adept in a temple. They dont ask gobby and therefor think that the mightiest goblin adebts will be in the highest plane. Actually there is a small temple in the outer areas too .
They use long term invis. and air walk spells to travel rather save over the city. (nice thought there)
But gobby doesnt go with them and so they can only travel to the point where the main street leads to the 2nd city plane. As they dont know the way the decide to just go north, as that might as well mean "up" XD Which is more or less correct. They see a couple of building, a channel, a rather big building with guards, a barrack and finally the northern wall of the cave. They are now flying over the highest city plane but dont know where the temple is, as they only can see 60ft with darkvision.

A hold person later they captured one of the guards from a roof and force him to show them a rough direction. He is not as eager to help them as gobby was. After they found a building that seems to be something temple like, they bond him, make him invisible and throw him in a dark corner.

The temple raid:
In front of the temple are some guards, and the door is closed. Our invisible mages teleports through the door and scouts the inside. Its shapes like a cone, with a podium and a big statue of a iron goblin in the center. The door is locked and the key is not at sight. (At this point our rogue isnt with us anymore) So he gets back out an the group attacks the soldiers. They are no match except for some nasty thrown flasks with acid. One soldier manages to flee the battle while 2 block the door and alarm the inside through a slit in the door.
The mage is still invisible and teleport inside again getting caught in a darkness and silence spell cast at the door.
The group smashes the door, the mage shoots a fireball and gets cursed for defiling the statue of the iron one (an automatic trap) but he makes the DC. Fighting and slautering continues, our mage has a swordfight with one of the adepts XD and the barb gets another curse for trying to break the statue. This curse has to be removed by the cleric.
One goblins is captured alive which has not much to tell as he is pretty fanatic and only wants to keep them away from the basement. *CURIOUSITY*

Reaching the 3rd floor they see that the high adepts fled through a small window over the roof. Now they can see a larger amount of goblins gathering outside the building, which doesnt impress them all that much. They totally forgot about ther plan and now just look for the entrance to the basement.
They find it and enter a stone way leading down into a round room with an altar . There stands a black urn with red runes written over it and all over the walls. The urn is chained to the room with two big chains. When enterings the room voices appear in the mind, telling them to flee and run away, leaving the place as onyl death awaits.
*Not impressed but more curious*
They get a little closer and feel a chill of unease and coldness. They stay in 15ft distance and study the runes. Something about and elder evil, an eternal shadow, death, the abyss and a lot of stuff that makes them rethink their position.  They start to think that it might not be too smart to mess with that thing.

General Pake:
Behind them a small unarmed goblin comes down the ladder and introduces him as the messenger of General Pake. He quickly checks if the urn is safe and then adresses the group.
General Pake is one of the generals fighting for the thrown in Grodd and has now surrounded the building. His firt priority is to save the urn and therefor wants too talk to the group. They actually agree and meet Pake and  roughly 100 soldier outside. He is pretty arrogant but sees the strength of the group and the potential to use them to gain power. He offers them a save place to stay and help in there quest. The group agrees, gets coverd in some stinkin leather and led through the city to a big building or palace in the middle city plane. Here they can rest and talk to Pake.

His biggest rival is general Sana, as she recently claimed the throne for herself. Pake suspects Sana to work together with outsiders as she grow stronger in the last 2 days. Another General might be bribeable with something really shiny, like a mithrill shirt. On the next day Pake takes part in a meeting of the generals where they discuss their positions, alliances and power.
Our mage offers to come with him invisible and just burning down all the generals, but Pake refuses. A goblin doesnt assasinate his opponent face on, this is done more stealthy and not in the open. (This basically makes the mage more evil than the goblins XD)
Pake wants the group to stay in the are, not causing commotion and just wait a day until the temple raid has been settled and he returns from the meeting.

Informations:
Pake laughs at them when he hears about their theory of a shadow invasion, so that thought is now earased. As the guards that encountered them at the temple saw them coming from nowhere they now know that there are outsiders in the city and that they travel invisibile. So now there is at least 1 guard at every important building that can see invisibility.
But the group can still use the "stinking hole" as gobby described it earlier. Its the sewers. They can be entered through a well - there is one in the palace they are in right now and in every district, but in an open place. Or the latrines. ;P *FORTITUDE SAVE*
Pake agrees to 5 years of peace in which he will not attack Cormyr, but to do so he has to become high consul of Grodd.

At this point our barb had to leaf and so only our cleric and the mage explore the closer sewer areas and run into a gel. cube.
The cleric runs right into it and get a little digested. XD He gets out of hit but gets swallowed again by the mass. The mage too but luckily they never fails the fort save for the paralyze effect.

After this we finally decide to end the session .
For the next time I will let them come across one member of the "other" group that supports general sana and does assasinations for her. Its a mage and he will pretend to be glad to meet them, as he want to help them now and everything. He basically wants to pretend casting buffs on them just to teleport away, to warn his group.
Maybe another ooze in the sewers or a digester. ^^

The meeting results that Sana defeated an assasin by one of the other generals and now boast with it. Which makes some generals ally with her.
Our group can either bribe one of them or kill them to gain influence for Pake.
 

[Dwarfi]

Session 7: Goblin tavern brawl!
Our rogue isnt with us...again. Very sad as this whole scenario would have been great for him.

General Pake returns from the meeting and explains that his enemy, General Sana, killed an assasin who tried to murder her. On the meeting she boasted with it and impressed 2 generals by doing so. One is URM, one of the 4 more powerful generals.
Both now think about allying with Sana and so Pake decides to bribe Urm to maybe gain his favor.
He already has a treasure prepared, but the PCs can add stuff. URM has a nack for rare metals. They add a silver dagger, some rupies and bottles of expensive wine.
The present works and Urm will not negate any further with Sana and stays neutral.
(If the groupe had added mithrall or adamant, Urm would have joined Pake.)

Another powerful general, RORD, is about to ally with Sana, and after some discussions Pake and the PCs come up with a sneaky plan.
They want to spread the rumor, that SANA is going to attack RORD as soon as they ally. The original thought was to use dominate person on some of Sana's warriors and let them do it. But the problem was to find some of them. Anothe idea was to summon celestial goblins to do the job... but the goblins of Grodd dont talk celestial. ^^°
Now the final idea was to disguise the mage, with a quickly faked uniform of Sanas soldiers. It didnt really look good, but for a tavern it might just work.
So the elfmage was prepared, got some stinking leather clothes and picked some black, oily ooze wine from the kitchen to "improve" his disguise.

Now the group enters the sewers again and moves to the west. On the way they get attacked by 2 digesters, which spray their acid fluids on the group. the barbarian gets a pretty hard load.

After that they reach the destination point, lift the mage up which teleports the last couple of feat through the latrines.
He is now on a small square in the living district. A lot of goblins walk the streets and there is a lot of noise going on. After walking the streets for a while, he finally finds something close to a tavern, which smells just slightly better than the sewers. Goblins are drunk, boasting and drinking together, the bar is literally sieged by a big number of them.
Now the fun begins and by shouting out Sanas name and some gibberish he finds at least some of Sanas men - totally drunk.
They hit his bottle and force him to drink with them (which he fakes as good as he can)
He manages to heat up the atmosphere between Sana and RORD supporters until one of RORDs men tries to hit him with a bottle, misses and hits another goblin. Now chaos breaks loose. Screaming, grappling, Goblings fly over tables, fists hit faces - some in the elfs face. ^^ To get through this he has to teleport a couple of times, gets showered in more of the goblins liquors, tries to blow up the alcohol (which fails) and tries to somehow get out of this.
Hand grab his clothes and pull him in again, ripping some of his cover to shreds until he finally escapes.
Outside the mage continous to spread the rumors and gets pushed aside by a patrol, that marches straight into the tavern. - Some goblins fly out of the window holes.
The deed is done - This part was a heck of fun to play.

The mage returns to his friends, bruised, with ripped clothes and stinking of alcohol. On the way back the PCs recognize a gas smell and quickly extinguish the torch. With a daylight spell they continue through the gas field. They should now be somewhere near Pakes palace again and lift up the mage to check. Right at that moment, a yellow-brownish ooze like mass falls from the ceiling, splatting all over them. As this is just a o.jelly it has to make a grapple check, which he fails against the melees, but the mage is stuck and gets a little damage.
With the gas around, the group cant use fire spells or the flaming hammer of the barb and so he uses his bastard sword, cutting the oose right in two.
Great, now there are 2 of them. ^^
The cleric starts to simply hit the ooze with its fists, whic hworks surprisingly well. After some blows one part of the jelly stops moving, while the other half crawls up the ceiling.
A quick barbarian jump and a good blow with a fist later the jelly is dead, falls of the ceiling and covers the barb in stinking slime.

The group finally returns to Pakes palace, which immediately sends a forged letter to Sana, to make it evn more effective.
Our group spends the night in the bath, using the soap of the elf, which he carried around for years now. ^^

END of Session 7
The RP part was a lot of fun and the situations for the encounters were a good pick too. Of course CR5 or 6 monsters cant do much against our group anymore, but that wasnt the idea to begin with. In the next part some battles between the generals will finally start. Though Pake doesnt want to use the PCs in them.
The coup against the SANA/RORD alliance works and RORD gets assasinated by SANAs assasins (human rival group) and replaced him with the leader of the clerics, which was bribed before.

After the army battle, Pake wants a certain general dead and finally sends our group after him. He is well guarded and I am curious how the group will wind its way through this.
The palace will have different entrances, the maine gate, kitchen back door, latrines and the roof. Though the gate will be the hardest to do, as there is an elite guard there, which can see invisibility. (There is at least one of those at every important building, after the PCs showed themself at the temple raid)

Our barbarian now has a new anti magic ring. which works 1/day+ will mod. In his case 0. ^^ Now he wants to get some +willpower items, which is exactly what I hoped for.

[Dwarfi]

Session8 Assasination and another wizard

Our group wakes up, prepares and is ready to go... but Pake doesnt show up. The group is waiting and gets angry about it until a horn echoes through the window and a lot of noise occurs.
The group wants to leave the room but 2 guards push them back in. Gen. Pake is preparing for battle as there seems to be a big fight in the city.

Our group discusses the situation. Going, hiding, stay and wait ? They push the guards away and explore the palace a little. Not much to find there and so they finally settle down and just wait for a word from Pake. At some point a messanger arrives and gives the PCs a letter from Pake.
He describes the situation - the previous rumor spreading + the forged letter made Sana kill Rord and replace him with a lesser leader, most propably the leader of the adepts - Grarg.
Now grarg attacks another general, who Pake wants to join to gain another ally until an enemy general intervenes too.
Pake hates this situation and wants General Yoso dead.

There is not much discussion about this job, even the cleric is fine with it as long as she doesnt have to do it herself. ^^°
Again they use the sewers to get into the area, they look for hidden doors or something alike but can only find a latrine/ kitchen trash hole. OxO
Our barbarian lift herself up through the whole (veery carefully) and finds herself in a very small room (like a 1man toilet), opens the door a slit wide and looks into a goblin kitchen, filled with busy chefs, running around and screaming stuff.
A short discussion later and the mage tries the same method as last time: Going in invisible.
The mage goes upstairs and dodges a guard who can actually see invisible, but just turned around on his patrol. Walking around some rooms and teleporting through the wall randomly until he hits the bedchamber of the general and teleports himself right ontop of the sleeping general. XD
The goblin is furious and screams while our invisible mage shoots a burning hole through the bed. The general tries to fight back, but gets only more damage when hitting the fire shield. The guard from outside enters the room and attacks immediately while the general rolls himself under the bed.
But that doesnt save him either as the mage just covers beside it and shoots anoher ray under the bed.
The general flees the room and the guard tries to fight the mage but retreats too. The mage chases the general and finally kills him with a fireball after Joso made an escape through a window, down a rope, to the roof of a close building. The guard is almost dead and blows his alarm horn.

The cleric and barb in the sewers hear the blast and decide to rush in too. the kitchen people panick and run out, while  the two go upstairs and und use a wall of good to hold the entering goblin soldiers back. Those try a couple of times but have no real chance to make it through and so start shooting arrows.
Our mage meanwhile killed the last guard and does what he always does: Searching for loot - which he finds.
General Joso's room is filled with warloot from Cormyr, scrolls, maps and a vitrine with some items. He picks 3: A cloak, an amulett and a hammer.
The group makes its way through some locked doors through an upper room stuffed with all kind of stuff.
They squeeze through a narrow way and open another locked door that leads to the roof, where 40 goblin soldier are already in wait.
The soldier shoot arrows but cant do enough damage to overcome AC and DR. ( I used the mob templates for this purpose)
An air walking spell later and our group leaves through a rain of arrows, turns back to get the chared head of the general and enters the sewers through a well.

Although they have been seen by roughly ~60 goblins the PCs are happy with themself and make their way back to Pakes palace.
To their surprise they encounter a human, awizard as it seems, who seems equally confused to see them. They exchange some words and get to know that he belongs to Doxons group. The wizard tells them that he left the group and tries to get home on his own. Our own mage befriends with him and takes him with him to pakes palace.
! This is better then what I hoped for - Actually the wizard lies all the time and just wants to go back to tell his group, but now he even knows where they life and who they are allied with XD!

Identifying the items: Actually Yoso only collects cursed items, but they dont know that yet an so they are very happy to find a cloak of res+4/ an amulet of inv. and a +3 throwing hammer.
the barbarian immediately tries the hammer and finds out that its cursed as he gets thrown instead of the hammer. - A "throwing hammer" indeed. XD
They ask the new wiz to lift the curse, he fakes a spell and instead teleports away. The group is left a little confused but eventually gets what happened. Our cleric lifts the curse and the barbarian is able to let go of the hammer.

Pake returns and is more than happy to hear the news of Josos death, though he is rather shocked about the charred head.

Our group goes to bed and while they fall asleep the mage turns around and sees a small golden hourglass on his desk that hasnt been there before. As he watches the finals grains of sand fall through it. I count down: 5 ...4...3....2....1 ... "I cast detect magic"....BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!! XD
The stored Lv10 fireball explodes and leaves characters and furniture alike in ashes. At this point they are pretty much sure that the wiz was evil...

COMMENT: They are so happy about the new items that it almost hurts me that they are all cursed too. Its a little surprising as we had a discussion about too much loot in the group and how they get too much stuff... and then I give them 3 very strong items of which one turns out to be cursed and no one questions the other two? Seriously ?
The mage took the cloak, which is actually a cloak of vermin. The amulett of invis. is the opposite and summons a swarm of bumblebees and fireflys around the user - veeery stealthy.

In the next session the rival group tries to poison the food and the enemy general attacks our alliance head on. They have a magical items, a black cage, that shoots a powerful beam which they are going to use at least once. Pake counterattacks and the final battle for grod begins.
Now Sana sends her assasins after our group - which will be a very hard encounter- though I am not sure of how they will meet.

[Dwarfi]

Finally! After a month break we had another session again. ^^

Session #9 Sana attacks & Doxons Group


Our group wakes up in the burned room, a goblin brings them food again which they eat, just to find out that it was poisened.
Everyone makes its save check so they are left with some pain in the belly. ^^

I give the group some time to make their own moves. Thoughts about looking for the goblin who brought the food come up and stuff like leaving the allies alone, to just go for the treasures. ^^
A series of goblin horns alerts everyone and it start to get noisy as all the goblin soldiers arm themselfs and run downstairs.
Our group is a little confused and climbs a tower... from whcih the see the goblin forces gathering in front of the building. The nightvision of the group doesnt reach further, but a goblin messenger from the general finds them and tells them that Sana is attacking. They are to meet with general pake.
As they hurry downstairs the hair on our mages arms stand up, just before a bright light and a giant blast destroys half of the palace.
Our group gets out of the ruins and meets pake and the rest of his army at tha base floor.
Sana is allied with the clerics and used the black cage of Gruktoon, an evil artifact that sucks up life from the ones inside and shoots a powerful beam at its target.

Pake moves out to attack Sanas forces while our group is supposed to somehow find and destroy the cage.
At this point our group does exactly what I expected them to do: Air walking again...
They think about directly going over the army and just attack, but I was able to navigatre them slightly around them so that I can start the real encounter: The big rival group of Doxon !

A man in a shiny armor stands in a street below the group, he calls out to them and they go down, now standing on a crossroad.
He wants them to stand back in the search for the treasure or die. Cocky as my group is they see an easy 1vs4 situation and dont give in.
The Crusader has a big guisarm with him and so he calls out for "help" as a young black dragon emerges from the shadows on a nearby roof, growling and cursing at the PCs.
They start to get big eyes as they still remember their last encounter with a young dragon. ^^° What they dont know is that its just an illusion.
the crusader takes off a glove and throws it at our group, hitting the barbarian.
The glove holds a silence spell, activated by a single word of the mage (which stands invisible on a roof)

The battle begins:
Our mages starts off with a anti dragon aura and the enemy crusader charges the barbarian, hitting with a bonecrushing strike. Reducing his Con by 2 points. Alright, now the Pcs have some respect. ;P
The barb. gets through the stand still feat and lands a big crit on the first blow he lands. Halfing the Crusaders HP - At this point I thought, WTF? The first attack and its already like this again?
But it turned out otherwise.

The mage from the roof casts sensory deprivation on the cleric, totally negating all his senses, which forces him to waste a dispell on himself.
Our rogue shoots arrows at the dragon of which one would hit, but just vanishes into the darkness. This was the first point where they had some doubts.
From another street the 3rd enemy appears, a Duskblade with a spiked chain, he hits the deaf/blind cleric for -2Int/Wis/cha.

Rogue and barbarian try to fight off the crusader, who does a great job in keeping them at bay. Regaining some life points with revitalizing strike and being lucky as the barb misses on 3 attacks in a row. Our Clerics fights the duskblade but gets easily disarmed by a true strike, Hitting with his bare gauntlets works fine too. He also summons spiritual weapons.
The dragon flies over to another roof, but as he is not attacking, our cleric disbeliefs him and recognizes him as an illusion... too bad 2 of his friends are inside the silence zone and cant hear him.

The fight is nasty but manageable until the leader of the group appears. Doxon, an elite rogue/swashbuckler enter the fight at the end of #3. He moved around the group and appears right behind the mage. He lands a potential crit (which is negated by a def. spell) but still deals ~30 dmg with all his attacks. Then the poison kicks in and this time the mage fails, he drops to the ground and is unconcious.
In the same round our cleric casts a defensive aura against evil, which doesnt protect them against the coming confusion spell. To my surprise everyone but the barbarian made it. That was the first time ever, that someone didnt make such a check. ^^

now it gets hairy, our mage is down, the barbarian is only brabbling and the cleric has some big debuffs on him. At least he manages to bring the dusblade down, after eating another attack with a ray of enf. Doxon stands flanking behind the cleric and gets a hold person. (which was easily the most important move in the battle as he would otherwise kill the mage)
Now our rogue goes into close combat against the crusader O_o and doesnt minimal damage.
After that the crusader moves back a little and misses with one attack.

In the final stage of the battle I decided to make the enemy caster visible on the roof and throw an ice lance at the crusader, which totally missed him. Lucky bastard.
Doxon never gets out of the hold person as he would have to make a DC17 Will check.
But our cleric cant kill him as he has to immediately use his revival spell to keep the rogue from certain death, after he was hit by a divine strike head on.

The mage on the roof deletes the confusion and casts a dom. person on the barbarian, not knowing that he is protected by an aura (I didnt know it either ^^)
Now the battle finally goes well, the crusader slowly gets forced down (protected by die hard and his del. dmg pool)
Doxon is easily killed after our barbarian cuts him with a 10point powerattack.
and the mage on the roof tries to run for his life but cannot escape the 3 spiritual weapons of the cleric, who just airwalked to the roof.

This was the first fight in which they got really really close to a wipe. Which was just exactly what I wanted. *Making them remember that they are not immortal*
I prepared some loot ahead this time.
A broach of stability, gold, poison and a set piece: The set of the black snake. something I prepared for our rogue.
I want the PCS to get fewer items but feel more connected to them, so I made up some special items with storys or prequests to get or activate them.
This is for the rogue, but the mage already glared at the vest too. ^^
I let themroll for some items, which resulted in a cloak of prot+2.

Still they were a little mad at me, as the seemed  to expect way more stuff. Basically everything the NPCs were wearing. Which is something I definately WONT do anymore, as I know what would happen. Even though not everything is useable or at their taste, they would grap everything they can (which is a lot thanks to some of those nasty bags of carrying of what they are called.)
And then sell everything or replace it with something more valueable if space runs out.
I gave them around 15-20k worth of gear. If Igave them everything they would carry at least 70k with them.

For the next time:
Our group got mauled heavily.The rogue and the cleric need to regain HP, while the mage has at least most of his spells left.
But they are still in a hurry to destroy the cage, otherwise it shoots again, killing general pake and with him their only powerful ally in the city.
I am still thinking of how to do this. Keeping track of time is a difficult thing to do.
The cage shot shot - the went out, met the general, prerared and moved out, saw the crusader and fought them off.... I think thats easily 10 minutes.
Maybe I will make them do a group roll. If the majority has 11 or higher they still have like 1 minute left, if they fail their allied general dies in the blast

And if they actually try to fight Sanas army they will get stalled by hords of soldiers.
The army falls back into the direction of the grand palace.
If the PCs follow them they get attacked again, this time by soldiers with trolls and clerics as back up.
Managing that as well, they enter the channel, which is the entrance to the highest plane of the city and can be flooded in an emergency
They could still use Airwalk to get out again (God, I start to hate that spell) and then enter the great plaza in front of the palace.
If they want to encounter the army there too, they will meet the final weapon of the goblins, a black urn, which they have seen before and contains a great evil.

And I forgot to activate the cursed cloak, the mage wears... well then it just has another activation rule. Like when resting outside of a bed.
 

[Pencil]

Good to hear the encounter was at least challenging ^^"

[Dwarfi]

It surely was. ^^ Thanks to the great help in this forum.

If I had played just a tiny bit different the mage would have been dead for sure. All it needed would have been a hide in plain sight after Doxon flanked the cleric and he wouldnt have been hit by the hold person.

Of course the mage on the roof could have escaped easily with gr. invisibility, but I decided on letting him make  a stupid move, so that the session can come to an end.

In the overall I am really happy with the way this turned out. It was a lot of work to prepare.

[Dwarfi]

Session #10 The black cage of Drak`Thul

The session begins with looting the corpses of their rivals. While the others go for the nearby corpses, our mage uses exp. retreat to search for the mage, who died somewhere between the houses and smaller streets. On the way he runs into a scared goblin which holds a healing potion ( Our mages takes it away from him). Around the next corner a big group of goblins forms a ball around something, like a bunch of vultures. A fireball later they are all ash, as well as the dead mages' corpse and his spell book. Everything else is already lootet from him.
Our elf mage returns and they loot the other stuff. Some Weapons (MW) potions, poisons, a little Gold and some nice magical items. One is the set piece I wrote about in my last post.
They dont take the armors as it would take too much time to get those off.

The group is still in a hurry to destroy the black cage, who is somewhere behind Sanas' armys, charging up for the final blast.
Airwalking does the trick and the group walks over the fighting armies. Our rogue eats a dispell magic, but only one of his rings is affected for some time.
Arrows are shot at them, but the AC and DR3 from the cleric make them pretty imune.
And finally they come to an area a little behind the battle lines, where 2 armies of Sana stand guard, ~6 special soldiers and 2 ogres. All around a 2x2m tall cage. giving away a hell of a stench, black and red with dried blood from its imprisoners and a very evil aura.
There are 4-6 goblins or other slaves inside the cage, most lie down already and the hairs of our mage are standing again, because of the magical power.

I keep count of the time over  this battle. The cage will shoot after 1 minute (10 rounds)
- The officers and armies are shooting arrows at the group doing minimal damage with 1 lucky shot. Our mage starts with an empowered fireball to kill an officer, an ogre and a lot of goblins in the armies. The barbarian charges in and attacks one of the officers, who barely survives the attack but is then killed by a very good arrow shot from the rogue.
Spellcraft check: The group is still far away but the fireball doesnt seem to do much damage against the cage, except for killing all the prisoners inside it.

The battle continues, another fireball is shot, most of the officers get fried and the 2nd ogre gives the barbarian a big hit. While the more distant officers now use darkness and silence spells to stop the casters in our group. The armies close in to the barb. and surround him, doing a little damage. ( I use mob group templates for this - Its very handy)
Spellcraft check: This time the fireball didnt hit the cage directly so they can see how a part of the flames is sucked into the cage and seems to load it up some more. Actually I reduces the needed time for the blast by 1 round everytime magic is cast into it. So they only have 8 rounds instead of 10. (But they dont know it, I start to describe the cage changing- making small sounds or vibrating, creating some sparks in one direction, forming a small light sphere.... It helps a lot to build up the tension.

Our casters move out of the darkness and silence zones, while the rogue walks around it, close to the cage (everyone is still airwalking so they can move around pretty easily, but they have to come down to inspect the cage closely. The fight goes on, the other officers are killed as well as the ogre. As the 2 armies start to swarm around the cage, engulfing it  our cleric tries a divine attack and lands a smite blast on the cage, doing damage to the goblins and blinding them for 1 round.
But will it affect the cage ? A quick dice throw later - No. Now they have only 7 rounds and are already pretty close to that.
In round #6 our group closes in and everyone stands either close to the cage, floating above the blind goblins or simply stands inside the army. A check from the rogue reveals: This thing is ancient but very simple in its use. Its a no brainer and simply shoots in one direction. Sadly there doesnt seem to be a switch to turn it off. The cage is made of 6 pieces, which are just build together when needed, but when magic flows through it, it becomes more and more solid, like an elec. magnet. The pieces itself are made of massive iron.
The conclusion: Deactivating that thing might be risky at the best, so they want to try and throw it over or at least turn it into another direction.

Everybody grabs the cage while a big white rotating ball has formed at one side, producing a deafening sound. All pull together and.... fail.
A total of 40 would be needed , but 3/4 make very low rolls and so they only reach 35.
To make things worse, reinforcements appear ( the group isnt sure though if its Sanas troups or the allies)
The remaining goblins around the cage now know what the PCs are up to and try to stop them, everyone clings to the cage while the only remaining officer has the great idea to cast a grease spell on the cage, making it slippery and slimy.
Now the Str DC has increased a lot to 60, which would need a full round of very high rolls to make it.

Energy sparks from the power sphere, blinding everyone who looks inside it, it reaches out, forming a lance just to abruptly pull together into a tiny white ball, almost dissapearing for a second.
A crackling sound fills the air and then... I make a Roll to check if it goes off or if they still have 1 round left ... 20 !!!
The power is released in a gigantic white blast, vaporizing everything in its path, enlightening almost the whole city for a second. The PCs get a last glance on the ruins of Pakes palace, where they lived for the last weeks before it turns to ahses. Together with General pake and most of his forces.
(I didnt know how this would turn out either so it was very thrilling to play this out)

The cage has lost its power and becomes surprisingly instable. It appears that the magical power has to flow through the iron and through ALL pieces to make it work. So the cleric and the barbarian pull on the top part and simpy lift it from the rest.
With this the group airwalks away, before the goblins armies can regroup. ( Most of them got thrown off their feet by the blast) In a good height the group thinks about what to do. They know only of 1 good soul that is still friendly to them in this city: Gobby !
While the black cage almost hurts the cleric, because of its evil and bloody aura, so produces gobbys' ring a warm feeling of friendship and happiness which leads him directly to Gobby in the southern fields, outside of the city.

Gobby is overjoyed seeing the cleric again and utterly shocked about what he holds in his hands.
On the question of what to do with the cage, Gobby offers a hiding spot under a mushroom or the "stinking hole" (the canalysation)
They follow Gobby to his small hut, where the group uses all of their remaining powers to somehow destroy the cage piece.
The mage knows a magical forge would do the trick, a hight temple of some deity or dragons fire... neither is really available so they give their best with their own powers.

Concentration checks from the mage, burning hands
Turn undead from the cleric (I would have prefered something against evil, but I decided to just give him that much ^^)
And some mighty blows with the barbarians flaming hammer.
The black magic is forced out of the iron like from a dirty sponge, but it doesnt seem to be enough to destroy it.
Actually, Gobby offers the final idea to use his friendship rings which are soaked with good enery and cut through the dirty cage like through butter. The cage falls apart until the rings are out of power as well and get stuck inside the black remains, like 2 shiny golden pearls.
The cage is destroyed but the PCs have lost their most powerful ally and Sana has taken over the city of Grodd.

END OF  SESSION#10
This session was a hell of a ride and I totally enjoyed it.
Sana will now be parading to the great palace where she will take the title of High council of Grodd. That will pretty much be the place where our group will be heading next.
The Players are still super eager about the black urn they saw in the temple and want to open it, if they attack Sana they might find out.
Its up to the players to decide what to do next. The goal of the dragons treasure is not even in sight yet, but going to the palace brings them really close to the dragon lake, where the hidden portal to the next plane is.

Items: I changed the remaining 2 cursed items a little, as they still havent been activated so far.
The cloak of vermin of the mage is an actual +4 cloak, but only as long as he remains clean. He has to wash himself at least 2 times a day or the vermin come out. Activated once it becomes active again when the mage gets diryt (fallying into mud, diryt water and stuff like that)
The med. of invisibility actually makes you invisible, but every other creature turns invisibilbe as well (at least for the user of the med).

[Dwarfi]

Session #11 Sana and the mystical lake

Finally at Gobbys small hut, our group can rest again. Though the trance of the elven magician is disturbed by some insects that seem to come out of his clothes.
They become more and more until there is no doubt left, they come out of his coat. A bad feeling raises in the elves' head ... he tries to get the cloak off....  he cant!
Because our group hasnt rested yet no one has a remove curse ready.  They try it with a dispell but that doesnt do much.
A spellcraft and history check later our elves remembers a story of an old magician that used to craft things like this. He was very clean and gave items with such an effect to his pupils to keep them clean and make them wash themself every day.
(This was supposed to give them enough hints that the effect of the coat can be restored to the +4, if the user washes himself every day and keeps himself clean)
However our group didnt really get the idea and just cut the cloak intp pieces to get rid of it. T_T
Too bad for the mage.

After the rest our group discussed what to do next. Gobby returned from a shopping trip or something like that and told them that there was a victory parade in the city. Obviously Sana has won.
- An easy target! And so our group airwalks over the city (again) into the diretion of the 3rd city plane, where the grand palace is supposed to be.
They arrive before the parade and come across a big plaza with a lake. Right at the northern end of the lake is the palace and its here where our mage feels a very light, almost unnoticable magical aura. It takes a while to find out that it seems to emit from the water and that it is closest to a dragons aura.

Alright thats enough to get the group curious. For the moment Sana, the palace and the fate of cormyr is forgotten. They want to explore this lake.
The Barbarian dips in and dives to the ground, where she finds an unnusual pattern on the ground which doesnt look like natural rocks. And she also finds a shield shaped stone plate, as big as her arm.
She returns to the others and together they find out that it is closest to a dragons scale, made of stone or covered in it. The pattern on the lakes' ground fits to this idea.
The more they investigate, the more the idea raises that this is a place somehow related to the dragons body. Our mage decides to go down and finds a circular hole at the northern end of the ground. From a close distance it emits a magic that feels like a teleportation magic, simmilar to what brought them to Grodd.
It doesnt look like a constructed portal and there are no signs of where it may lead or how to activate it.

The plan is complete:
Air walk in 60 ft height (darkvision range)
Surprise Sana and kill her in one go
Flee through the lake (Here the group takes 2 risks: 1st- they hope it simply opens when touched - if not the heavy armored cleric will drown for sure 2nd they hope it leads them to a better place than Grodd. ^^

The parade emerges and between 2 big armies, ranks of officers and clerics Sana marches to the palace. Our group attacks immediately and lets a volley of fireballs, flamestrikes and other aoe spells rain down. Sana manages to survive the 1st attack and runs into one of her bigger armies where she gets at least some cover.
Our barbarian doesnt have much to do in this fight as he doesnt really want to go down to mow through the armies alone.
The clerics do what they can to stop the PCs, darkness, silence, dispell (which  hits the mages fire shield and heart of water spells)
the other soldiers and officers march to Sana while shooting volleys of arrows at the group. Thanks to the mob group templates it does at least some damage.

Sana collapses inside of her army.
Though our group isnt completely sure of it they decide that she must be dead and run for the lake, dive into the water and touch the circle.
A feeling like the one they felt at the entrance to Grodd overcomes the Pcs and the get suckes in again. This time they are prepared for the effect and dont get a Con drain.

The PCs awake at the shore of a small river, feeling grass and fresh air and ... SUNLIGHT! The players are all blinded by the light. After almost a week in utter darkness the sun appears to be almost unbearable bright. They find it hard to see far but they can make out some shadows nearby which appears to be a small group of trees.
With hurting eyes the players happily start to wash themself in the cold water.

But our cleric has a bad feeling about this, because his connection to his deity hasnt become any better. He doesnt think that they are in Cormyr.

END of Session 11

Notes: I thought our group would raid the grand palace,  so I was surprised that they totally forgot about any possible loot when the lake came up. For battle, this was the worst way for Sana to fight, a surprise round against our group is almost certain death. It was a miracle that she made most of the saves and survied the 1st round. ^^
I could have let her survive by merging her with the army, but that would be hard to explain, why wouldnt she die when the army is hit by an aoe spell?
And so she found a rather unspectacular end. The leader of the clerics will eventually become her successor, maybe he is a little smarter than Sana.

The lake is actually the resting place of Nalavahra. After she got imprisoned in the plane of Grodd, her treasure was transported to another smaller plane, that was magically connected to her.
After centuries of sleep the dragon merged with the stone ground (at least to some extent). The spot where her eye rested is now the portal to the demiplane of the dragons treasure.
This smaller plane is just 2-4 miles big and actually looks like a part of Cormyr. This is where Nalavaras elven comrades were imprisoned.
This was almost a millenia ago, but an elven mage used a spell to magically enlengthen their lifes. Of course you dont live almost 1000 years in such a place without loosing your mind.

There are a lot of random things to roll about the elves, so it really depends on the luck of what happens. In the worst case they get spotted at the river, one elve alarms everyone else and the PCs have to fight all 5 of them at once - which will be tough. If they are lucky the scout isnt on post, visiting his comrades or simply walking around in the delusions of his mind.

Im looking forward to the next session.

[Dwarfi]

Session 12: Of Arrows and wasps

Our group is a little small this time. Only the wizzard, the cleric and the rogue. Our barbarian is missing.
So I had to replan a little.

Our group started in this new area, recognizing that it looked like Cormyr, but everything was more saturated. A deeper brown in the trees, a stronger green in the grass...
Standing at a small river our group is at the feet of a rocky hill (~100ft tall) with a dragon head like carving in it - a big dragon head.
As the airwalk spell still works they go over there to check it out. Looking for texts, hints, magic and doors. They find a magical aura like the one in the lake before and pin it down to the eye.
Our Cleric is about to touch it just to check what happens (he would be transported into the lake in front of the palace of Grodd- where hundreds of goblins are still around)
But his comrades are able to stop him, as they are already a little short on spells.

Right then a horn is blown and arrows start flying at them. Around this time, the airwalk spell stops too and they are stuck on a rather rocky ground, facing a very good archer on top of the hill. (~250 ft away)
Our rogue can shoot some volleys back in the opponents direction and actually hits him. When they come closer to 200 ft they can see a silver haired elf cowering in the distance. Everyone of our players gets hit at least once, our rogue gets critted until our elvish wizzard uses a transportation spell to switch his position with the one of the elve. He doesnt make his check and now stands ~ 10 ft away from our cleric. Of course he isnt happy with that, drinks a potion of inv. and goes for a run. Our Cleric can hear him go and shoots a dispell after him, followed by a spiritual weapon. Usually the  Elve would have fled into a very close fog, which would have saved him, but now he is in a rather bad situation to get there.

The elve is brought down to his knees but kept alive. Talking to him reveals that he is able to understand common language but doesnt answer in such. He uses a very old elven dialect and appears to be a little ill in the head. He hates Cormyr and is really, really old even though he doesnt look like that. Thanks to some good rolls the prisoner isnt affected by a dominate spell or other stuff that is supposed to make him more cooperative. (Actually he is just waiting for reinforcements, since he blew the alarm horn before the fight began)

Our group wants to rest (even though they just did so ~4 hours ago) and looks for a place to hide. There is a big forest streching from northwest to southeast and a small copse on their side of the river. They go for the later and camp besides the trees while further tying up the prisoner. The elve talks to our elven mage trying to convince him to fight for his brothers and starts telling him parts of the story. His name is Lorsan and after what he says is abround 900 years old. The beloved one of Nalavara - Thratoyl, was slayn by Azoun I, the founder of cormyr. After that the elves and the dragon fought for revenge but got trapped by the cormyr wizzards into this demiplane. Which seems to be impossible to leave.

Meanwhile our rogue meets some blueish light ribbons between the trees, randomly appear some shapes that resemble a human body. They dont react to him and he returns with the mage. The copse seems to be haunted by wood ghosts of some kind. The rogue touches one of them, but isnt affected by a fear spell. The ghosts seem to wear armor and as our 2 PCs walk around in the woods they come across some very old shield pieces and swords. On some of them a symbol is still barely readable but none of them knows it. Even our Cleric is not of much help here. It resembles the symbol of the Cormyr knights, but looks different. Its still their best guess and so the ghost are now the remains of ancient Cormyr knights.

Our rogue shoots the first animal he sees in this world, a small bunny. When the camp is suddenly surrounded by 4 giant wasps. The wasps fight surprisingly well sting a lot and wear down the PCs even further. Everyone makes his poison saves while our mage extracts some wasp poison.
The group still wants to rest and decides to stay between the trees. Right now I have to make a decision as a DM. There are a total of 4 other very strong elves in the plane, which have by now gathered and found out what happened to their comrade. As it is now they could single handedly kill the entire group, especially without the barbarian. But they could try to rescue their friend first. As they dont want to risk too much, the elves wait for nightfall, before they act.

While the hours pass I roll a couple of times until a noise is heard. This time 6 wasps appear. Blood and poison is spilled and our group is now pretty much empty. Some smaller spells are left but nothing strong enough to beat the elves. After ~20 total poison checks our mage fails the last and looses 3 DEX. The anti poison spell of the cleric saves him from worse effects.

End of Session 12
- The elven ranger was interesting, as he had a good position to fight from. The transportation spell was a very nice idea though and letting him life resolved in a couple of nice rp options.
I am know preparing the next session and the encounter with the 4 other elves.
They could just attack the group straight ahead (which should be close to impossible to do four our players) Or they go for the rescue first. The elven assasin/rogue could sneak closer in the darkness of the night, throw a darkness spell and a cause a fake noise to lure the group away from the prisoner, while cutting his ropes and giving him a healing potion.

Or even more sneaky. A fake noise, luring one away and trying to take him captive to maybe exchange him for the prisoner.

Any other ideas ?

[Dwarfi]

Session 13: RUN dude RUN and Its a dwarf!

The adventure continues and our elven prisoner is still bound to the tree at the edge of the little forest.
Its getting darker and our group starts to use some not so popular interogation methods.
The rogue sneak attacks the elve with the blund side of his dagger, dealing nonleathel dmg to knock him into unconciousness.
Now our wizzard casts dominate person on him and makes a heal check to wake him up again.
Our cleric isnt really happy with this but endures it for now.

Lorsan is now a little more cooperative and answers most of the questions they have, which are surprisingly few until the camp fire explodes into a thick cloud of smoke, covering all sight.
Our group is surprised but not attacked directly, they stand right beside the tree where Lorsan is and ... just wait.
On the other side of the tree another one of the elven guards sneaks and waits for the group to leave, so he casts a phantom noise in the other direction.
the group hears it and prepares for more.... but still dont move. *Ok as a DM I want them to move ^^*
I give them 2 turns of listening and waiting in the smoke until they got hit by a spell.
The enemy caster used Mass suggestion on them and because our barbarian wasnt in rage yet he didnt make his save, same did the rogue. Now both had the idea that THIS place is a really bad spot to fight and they should leave immediately. Both start running into the mist and the rest of the group follows.

The next part was really funny as the players only acted against each other.
At the edge of the woods the cleric finally makes a succesfull dispell on the barbarian. He stops and tries to catch the rogue, who follows shortly after him, but he is slippery and runs right past him. What follows is a series of running, grappling and escape checks. When reaching the southedge of the bigger forest the rest of the group finally catches up and dispells the rogue too.
The idea of going back to the old camp isnt really that appealing right now and so they decide to go into the forest to stay in cover.

The glade:
They come across a little glade with a little hut beside a tree. Its night already so they can barely see anything. Inside the little hut they make a detect magic check and find a small box under a grass like bed, it contains a scroll of stone to flesh. The rest of the room is rather simple and has no windows.
While resting over the night, they hear noises from outside, like rock crumbling over each other and a scream. Our Cleric goes out to check but doesnt see a thing. The other follow, except the mage, he stays to identify objects. The barbarian finds a trail like as if a rock moved through the earth and some humonoid ones too, signs of a fight.
He is more interested in the rocky trails and follows it through the forest alone (I let him make some track checks) until he reaches another glade. There is a small hill with a dwarfen like stone statue and a human sized earth elemental guarding it. Our barb. could have easily taken it out but he was strangely frightened by it. ^^

He uses a magical raven statue to sen a message to the cleric, who arrives some minutes later. They try to talk to the elemental but he doesnt understand common or celestial.
The elemental doesnt seem to be agressive and so they decide to let it be for now and go back to the others to rest.
After resting and identifying the group checks on the next morning. besides the hut is a little stone shrine besides a big tree with pitch black leaves but nothing meantionable.
And so they meet with the elemental, while our rogue decides to go to the old camp to check if someones there.
Despite the grave danger he somehow makes it there and back without any encounters. He finds out that someone was sitting near the tree where Lorsan was kept, but nothing more than that.

The dwarf
With a tongue spell, our mage is able to talk to the elemental, he seems to guard the statue of the dwarf, which is mostly overgrown by now. The wizz. shows him the scroll of stone to flesh and promises to free his "master". Leaving all of his stuff behind the mage starts to sit next to the statue to memorise the scroll into his book.... which takes another 8 hours.
After that time he finally touches the statue and breaks the spell. A pale dwarf with a silvery/golden shining beard comes to sight... and he is nude.
He is barely able to move and seems confused. The cleric checks his alignment and start to heal him and covers him in a blanket.
The dwarf is shocked to find himself nude and, what is even worse, without his preciouss stone collection or other belongings.
They listen to his story, as it seems that he was captured together with the elves and the dragon in the early years of Cormyr. To overcome the eternity he transformed himself into stone, which wasnt as enjoyfull as he hoped. He tells them most of the story, how Nalavaras beloved was slain by humans, of her grudge, the war and how the high wizzards of the early cormyr captured them all in this planar pocket. He was simply at the wrong time at the wrong place.
He introduces himself as Bobur Goldglim and will now follow the group to repay his dept and to find a way out.
He tells the group more about this plane, that its just 2x2miles wide, about the fog border the summoning changes, that there was never a dragon here and that there are 5 elves.

FINALLY our barbarians asks him about the treasure: "Is the dragons treasure her?" - "Yes" 
"Do you know where it is?" - "Sure its in a great pit at he middle of the plane." 

Now the players are heated up and walk straight into that direction. Giving the dwarf at least a cloak and a ring, while he otherwise remains unarmed/ or armored.
there is a wide open space in the forest with a great pit (400ft in site) and a stone tower at one side.
Of course they check that one out first.
The dwarf is rather surprised to find out that he cant either look through the stone nor can he walk through it.... He is an eath dreamer, but obviusly lost quite a lot of power during his sleep.
A secured door later they check the simple tower, which is build around a tree but dont find anything of worth.
They head to the pit and find a way down, there is a big cave opening (40x15ft in size) bones are lying in front of it and a horrible stench comes out of the entrance.

Our group is ready and buffed to the max.
End of session 13.

Notes: This was our first session without a fight, but I really enjoyed the part with the suggestion spell and the role playing in this, even though it was a little slow in some places.
The dwarf is my new personal character, a druid/earth dreamer focussed on earth and stone with a fear of water. The elves took most of his posessions and put them on the treasure hord, Including a divine staff, a dragonhide armor and his precious stone collection. He doesnt have any spells memorized right now, so he has to wait until the next dawn.

In the cave are 1 or 2 wyverns chained to the walls besides the entrance, they cant fly but still charge and attack. Deeper in there is the treasure and 5 or 6 battle trolls guarding the place.
I will buff them all up a little, otherwise they would be just blown away. For some reason my players still expect a dragon, even though they already know that there isnt one on this plane.

[Dwarfi]

Session# 14: "Its a Crit ... Again!"  or   "GOLD! GOLD! GOOOOLD !!!"

Hi everyone. Sad days are these for my fellow rogue, as he missed out our weekly session because he had to make a trip to england with his class. ^^°

So we are The cleric, the wizzard, the barbarian and the new found dwarfen druid, who still has memory problems and rolls a d6 everytime he could cast someting to see which spell lv he remembers right now. ^^

The group begins at the entrance to a big cave, bones are lying on the ground and a nasty stench emits from the cave. As they go closer they can make out a big chain lying on the floor, stretched from one side to the other and going through a big iron ring at the wall. The barbarian steps forward, graps the chain and pulls. A hissing sound and he is immediately attacked by a large wyvern, but it misses.
Now our barb is totally high as I describe the dragon like monster. But he looses the ini to the wiz, who steps forward and casts 3x scorching ray at the beast. CRIIIIIIIIT !!!!!  He deals ~80dmg in the first attack of this fight and instantly kills the poor beast. Our barb is not really happy about this as he wanted an epic fight. ^^°
They come to find a small locked box at the wyverns collar, a knockspell later they hold a blood smeared key in their hands.

Deeper into the dungeon, stairs and a small way to the left. They dont want to really leave the big path and send the earth golem in to scout. He finds some goblins and returns. The following fight is like stealing candy from babys. One goblin throws a bootle with acid at the cleric, but thanks to a natural 1 only hits the floow. The wiz and the cleric both get 1dmg because of some splatter. ^^ Meanwhile the barbarian makes a 8point powerattack on the last goblin and critical hits his head to peanut butter.
They find the sleeping chamber of the goblins and a forge like room, with some kind of magical ashes which resemble the magical key. They dont really know what to do with it and so take something with them and go back.

More stairs and a big hall with a sideway later they now go up a bigger stair and suddenly face 3 large trolls with axes.
Scorching rays, fireballs and flamestrikes and way too many crits later the trolls are pretty much dead. For some reason my DM dice was really bad today, any number above a ten was extremely rare, only when I rolled the saves agains the fireballs the trolls suddenly became lucky with 18/19/20 rolls.  ^^

The battle is done when another group of trolls shows up, this time one of them wears a big heavy armor. Our barbarian 4point power attacks him, misses on his 3 attacks and makes his haste attack - CRIT !!!! Again ??? ... So the troll boss is ~60 HP closer to death now. While most of the trolls +18 hit cant overcome the AC of the barb and the cleric. (Again thanks to my really strange dice) They make some hits every now and then but not too much. Finally the trolls are slayn and are roughly searched. The magical armor of the troll is marked as magical but not further investigated as it is a large armor. (Too bad, its a +4 armor of acid and fire resistance)

A sleeping chamber for the trolls later, they finally reach a huge door with 4 key holes in it. Above are 4 elvish words written: "Beast, fire, flesh and pain" An attempt of the wiz to teleport through it fails and so they try out the key they found. It fits in the one that says "beast".
There is a small hallway left that leads into a stone chamber with a big pool of a strange ooze like, transparent fluid. On the ground is a key.
*The pool is filled with acid and I wanted it to be difficult for them to get the key, but as usual our wiz pulled of the white rabbit trick and simply used a force hand spell, grapped the key and was done.... DAMN HIM ! THATS LAME! *I should have installed an anti magic field there*

So, now our group has 2 of 4 keys. They search a left out way that leads into a lime adit, but they dont find anything. Searching the bed chambers... nothing. The forge... nothing.
Hm....... Now they start to get creative. Our cleric trys to open the "flesh" lock with his bare finger. Nice thought, but no. Our barb tries something simmilar and cuts one troll finger off to do the same. Nothing ? Ok let burn it.... still nothing while there remains a burning troll finger in the lock. O___O After this he wants to try a tongue, but instead starts to disembowel the trolls. O_______O ... and finds a key inside the belly of the leader troll. O_________________________O

Ok 3 of 4 keys. Only the one that says "fire" is left. They hold a torch at it - nothing. Some of the magical ashes --- nope. Setting the ash on fire ? It enlightens in a white light but no.
They group is pretty confident to do something with the forge and the ashes. After a lot of try and error they FINALLY set that thing on fire to burn the ash in the forge. It works as most of the ash vaporises into a greyish smoke, leaving behind a black block of molten stone or metal. With a small hammer the dirt is removed and a fresh silvery looking key comes to sight.

YEAAAA!!!! The group runs back and opens the last lock. "gold,gold,gold,gold...."
The doors open and they look into a big hall " GOLD,GOLD,GOLD...."
filled with gigantic mountains of gold, dilver, platin and jewels.... "YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" !!!!!
The group is groggy, but is somehow able to hold back and not make a "Scruge MCduck gold dive"
Expecting some other danger they buff up again, mirror potions, invisibility anti dragon aura, detect evil and chaos.... and slowly enter the hall.
They walk over tons of gold as a evil aura enter the detection zone, but cant be pinpointed.

The group is on the watch while the wizzard start to push the gold into the bags of holding. A growling sound, some falling gold...what was that ? He continious to loot as suddenly a big red jaw emerges from the gold and closes around his arm. The mage uses an immediate action to teleport away, though I will have to check if thats a legal move or not.
The jaw dissapears into the mountain of gold again. The wizzard continous and is attacked again, this time it hits one of his mirror images.
And dissapears.

the cleric builds up a wall of good on one side, while the group clusters up, Watching the wizzard and readying their attacks in case something emerges again.

END of session #14.
At this point is was already pretty late and we had to stop. Hopefully our rogue will be back the next time.
Our group really expects a full blown dragon to be hiding in the gold, with wings and magic and all the stuff. Actually its just a pimped rage drake, a little buffed up, with leap attack, pounce and feats like that. but maybe I can check the dragonomicon again to see if I can give him a breath attack. That beast is partially merged with the gold and has a DR5 or 10 adamant. After what I saw today I should give him DR10, to let him survive at least 2 or 3 rounds. ^^°
Seriously, today had way too many crits while my dice sucked really, really bad. Thats not bad for the players, but I start to feel frustrated about it, when I pimp all the monsters and they just die without a fight because of the lame dice. T__T

Plan for the dragon fight: A red rage drake of bane. Pretty buffed up. He is covered in gold and jewels what explains the DR. Right now my party is a little too focused on the spot where the dragon came out, so I will use a scwarm of hoard scarabs as a little distraction. Shouldnt do much dmg thou but at the best kill some mirror images.

[Dwarfi]

SESSION #15: I NEED A HERO !

Finally our group is complete again, so we are 5 players in total if you include my dwarf. Although he is pretty much just in the background.
The first thing they did was to get down from the gold.

They stand a while on the side, trying to lure the beast out, the mage even talks in draconic. Without much result though. And so our barbarian starts to carefully push some of the gold in his backpack. The others focus on the gold, ready to hit any second. The air was is with electricity when suddenly one of the gold pieces bites the barbarian in the hand. He just throws it away as far as possible.
At that moment the gold hill in front of them starts to move like a liquid and slowly moves into their direction, making strange buzzing noises.
They think that it may be animated gold or something like that, it tkes them a while and one attack to find out that this is a swarm of hoard scarabs. It doesnt do much damage, but uses up 2 spells from the mage. Actually he shoots into the swarm when the barbarian and the cleric are inside and so they all have to make a REF. save. The swarm actually makes it, the players dont.
That makes 14 dmg for each player and 7 for the swarm.
Finally the swarm dissapears into the gold again and the final encounter begins.

Something like 15ft away, the gold starts to build up until it washes to the sides and reveals a large dragonlike creature. It isnt that tall and has a body which looks more like a tiger than a dragon. It has no wings either but is covered in gold and jems. Its eyes glow dangerously, standing growling on the hill, greedily staring at the players.
The mage is the fastest to react and lets of a series of scroching rays for a nice portion of damage. The dragon roars in anger and pain, bows his back and makes a gigantic jump, hitting the cleric with full force.
The cleric gets hit heavily, 2 claws and a mighty bite take the most of the clerics HP. To make things worse the bite results in a grapple and 2 followup rake attacks. The cleric is bleeding heavily and still stuck in the dragons mouth. He actually makes a suc. FORT. save otherwise he would be stunned for one round as the dragon throws him around like a dog its toy.

The other are shocked and try to either free the cleric or simply maul the beast. The barbarian goes for his hammer and gives the dragon a series of nice blows although a good part of it is absorbed by the gold and jewel armor. (He misses the cleric by 1 dice point when he attacks the grapple)
The earth elemental tries to open the grapple but fails, meanwhile the rogue stands behind the beast goind for a sneak attack. As it is a rather long creature he has a very small chance to hit the cleric. Lets say on a 1 or 2... and he rolls a 1. Now the cleric is a little closer to its death.

the mage finally has an idea and uses a transportation spell to change places with the cleric. Before the jaws are able to close on him too, he quickly teleports 10ft away again. The cleric is only standing thanks to his die hard feat, now he uses the only remaining "heal" spell on his staff to bring back most of his lifes. The barbarian next for a dragon attack, he gets hit by 1 claw but the other 2 just hit mirror images. Which actually saved the day.
The dwarf throws some mighty rocks at the beast and casting mass vigor on the group, the rogue goes for another sneak attack, he hits, although most of the damage is absorbed by the dragons golden armor.
The final blow comes from the mage as he places a max, empowered fireball into the center of the hoard which actually just hits the dragon. The beast crumbles and drops dead.
Meanwhile a big part of the hoard has melted into a big glowing blob of gold, silver and jewelry. ^^

The players are happy with their deed and start to loot. They find a small stair, leading some ft down into a room with magical items.
A staff, which cant be identified. It seems it is a powerful staff, but it seems to have lost its power over the centuries.
Next is a divine staff of the earth, a belt of hidden pouches, filled with strange stones and sand. (The dwarf is very happy to see that his old stonecollection still exists)
Vanguard treats, a bag of boulders (again the dwarfs') Some powerful scrolls (it should have been 5 but I let 2 burn in the blast )
An ioun stone of +2will and a mystical red crystal, the eye or Tyr. A legendary stone said to hold the powers of the gods lost eye.

Tons of gold, jewels, golden bracers and historical items of the ancient Cormyr.

---END of Session #15

Right now the law/good alignment doesnt look so interesting anymore, actually they start thinking about how to get rid of the goody goody cleric. So that they can keep all the gold for themselfs.
Greedy bastards, arent they?
The dwarf actually doesnt care much about gold, he only wants earth related items and precious stones, although he is pretty much interested in the skin of the dragon (which by now lost all the jewels attached to it)

Next time they will have to check if they can transport everything and how they split the share. The Quest says that they can keep 1/4 of the total treasure for themselfs, may it be in whatever form they want. Loot, scrolls, staffs.... this might become tricky as the scrolls and the staff are only of use for the wizzard, but that would make a pretty big share for him, so they could instead decide to sell some of the scrolls to make up for it. ^^

They will rest for sure, but the elfes are still waiting outside and just before midnight (when the evil elfes regain spells) they send in 1 or 2 summoned monsters, which actually dont dissapear thanks to the planes rules. They wont let them sleep for a full night but they would still regain their spells. Although now fatigued. 

[Dwarfi]

Session #16: Snoooorrrrr

This was a rather short session, so I decided to let them slack of a little.
My Players exchanged the loot, the wizzard got the scrolls, while the cleric took a pair of vanguard treats. Nice boots.
the dwarf took the staff of divine earth and the ioun stone as well as the stone collection.

Now its time for some sleep - so they think.
They set up a guard and go to sleep, but only for a couple of hours. At midnight the guard wakes them up as he hears some howling and the scratching of claws in the darkness.
A light spell makes it easier to see something, they can barely make out some dog like shadows in the distance of the big hall.

Our mage uses his med. of invis. and becomes invisible. He carefully moves around to scout something out, but he can only hear the beasts.
As he comes back he is surprised that he cant see his friends anymore. He deactivates the med. and everything is back to normal again. He is rather confused right now.
Actually the med. was loot from the gob. general who only had cursed items, so this is the final piece they never found out about. He turns invisible, but cant see any other creatures either.

The group gets attacked by 3 howler (CR3). Of course the will save for the howl is nothing and the reflex save for the quills is passed too. Although it was close in one case. but the rogue gets a nice bite in the arm and the barbarian gets a nice 40dmg crit in the back. ^^ Not bad for a CR3 monster.
After the beasts are slayn they return to the room and the mage takes the late guard.

just before sunrise he can hear a loud humming and wakes the players up again. As he returns to the great hall the air is already filled with 5 giant wasps. (CR3)
Our mage decides to use a scroll of summon monster 2 or something like that and summons a celestial giant bee.... actually he is not good enough for celestial, so its hust a giant bee....CR1/2.
It was cute.
A lucky hit on the barbarian is the only dmg thats dealt in that battle, while all wasps get shot down rather fast. One wasp has a showdown with the bee, but this epic fight ends as our barbarian uses a P.A.-11 with his great flaming hammer. He cant differ between wasp and bee and so I give him a 50/50 chance which one he hits. just for the fun. ^^
He rolls and so the cute bee dissapears under the edge of the bursting hammer. Rest in pieces poor bee.
The remaing wasps trys a counter attack but is dealt with easily too.

Finally they get some sleep again and reach the time around dawn to regain spells.
A "shrink item" on the remaining treasure solves every problem of transport, even though the spellcraft check to extend the spell fails, thanks to a 1.
And so they prepare and leave the empty treasure chamber. The dwarf now carries a big roll of dragon skin on his back, and the keys of the door are taken as well.
In the empty hallways nothing happens and so they climb up the last stairs and arrive at the entrance hall, where the whyvern was chained. A warm orange light fills the room as the rising sun shines into the pit.

To be save, our barbarian uses a stone statue of a raven to summon the creature from another plane. It flys through the entrance and suddenly vanishes in mid air.
Now they are carefull, the wizzard uses his medaillion again ;P and sneaks outside. Where he passes through a wall of dispel, which the elven guards have set up. A strong dispel removes his heart of fire spell. Some scouting around doesnt help and so he returns to his friends, passes the invisible wall again but looses no spell thanks to a weak dice.
Our barbarian marches forward and uses his anti magic ring (1/day-1round) and removes the wall. *YEY*
Some steps out they hear an elvish voice shout some attack orders and curses, just before the elves begin the attack...

END OF SESSION 16

Notes:
The next evening will be a hard fight, or at least thats what I hope.
elves are buffed with some spells, and items and will be hard to kill. Hopefully they dont get mauled with critical hits again. ^^°

Our wizzard has the idea that his medaillion is a cursed item, but didnt actually check it. He cant remember where he got it either.
But he argues, that he should still see them even if the enemys where invisible by the medaillion... what he doesnt know is that they are only invisible to him. The medaillion turns the user invisible, yes, but also creates a powerfull illusion on him so that he cant see any other creature either. So his "see invisibility" is useless in this case. ;P

[Dwarfi]

Session # 17: "Endgame" or "Youll never get me alive!"

And so the final fight begins. Every player is here to play his part. And I give them a short speech.
In one sentence: "I will kill you if I get the chance- no mercy today"
I put a lot of preps and thought into this battle, but I decided to give them a really hard challenge as this is the final encounter of the campaign. If I dont go for it now, then never.

Lets do this!

Our group eliminates the wall of dispell and gets surprised by two arrows of darkness, which block the vision in fron of the cave. Our cleric has a flying light sphere floating over his head, which negates the darkness in a 30ft area. but because of his position it doesnt reach far enough to negate all darkness. They still cant look behind it.
With a roar, a large fire elemental is summoned right in front of them, our rogue shoots his redied action against it, doing a little damage. The elemental attacks our barbarian, landing a big blow and burning a good chunk of her hair. The battle against the elemental is decided by the dwarfs earth elemental, spiritual weapons and more arrows. Our melees avoid him until a big fireball breaks through the darkness behind him. It does some damage and makes our players move.

Out of the cave:
Our Mage is the first to run around the elemental and through the darkness. He leaves and stands right in front of an elvish warblade.
He decides to cast a dominate person on him, which he deflects by using one of his concentration manneuvers. The warblade caounterattacks doing very little damage, as an ironskin spells deflects the worst. An elvish assasin shoots a poisened arrow at the mage, using true strike to hit... and misses with a nat 1. ^^ That was some big laughter.
From the other direction a large elve in plate mail, a shield and a flail marches down the way. Casting a hold person on our mage, but it fails too. (Lucky bastard)
The last elve to reaveal is a ranger, who hits, but doesnt overcome the mages DR. Meanwhile the enemy mage shoots another fireball into the darkness.

The fire elemental gets slain and our barbarian uses a pot of inv. In addition he gives one to our cleric and then move out together. He attacks the warblade but overestimates himself and misses his surprise attack. Our own mage now shoots an enchanced fireball at the enemy wizzard, which does no dmg at all as it is sucked into a lavender ioun stone. ;P
The warblade makes a swift invis. and moves behind the cleric. He hits with his unholy longsword and does some nice damage after that the barbarian catches up and together they slay the warblade.

On the other part: The elvish cleric hast cast an inf. crit wounds into his weapon and goes for the rogue, who now stands the closest to him. But misses by an inch.
Now its the turn of elish caster again and so a freezing fog comes upon them all. Mage and rogue manage to get out in the first round, but the others are stuck.

Our Rogue Elster: For some reason he decided that it was time and place to go into close combat against the large cleric. He shot a round of arrows at him, doing some damage.... and then it was his turn. This time he uses a smite to land a devastating blow, triggering the inf. crit wounds. Only thanks to a "die hard item" he remains standing, and gets missed by the 2nd blow. but the spiritual weapon hits and finally slays our rogue.

On the other side our mage uses a transportation spell to switch places with the assasin on the cliff. It works and the assasin uses spiderclimb and gets right back up. now our mage is pissed and casts desintegrate on him, but he gets lucky on his save and makes it. To make things even worse the damage dealt was a miserable 10.
Rogue and mage play cat and mouse until the assasin is finally slain by a series of scorching rays.

The elvish rogue on the other side, started targeting the dwarf, who dint leave the cave entrance, thanks to his lack of armor. Therefore he casted call lightning storm and started shooting the ranger every round. but the arrows deal too much damage and so he drops himself to the ground, adding an ironskin (heart of earth) while the earth elemental moves through the cliff to kill the ranger above.

The center:
The barbarian gets out of the fog after 2 or 3 rounds. But our cleric was faster, he reaches the corpse of our dead friend in time to cast a 1-round after death revife spell. The rogue lifes again.
But only for a really short time as the enemy mage calls down an ice storm in the fog. This time the rogue stays dead. 
Our Cleric gives a nice fight to the evil version, both use spiritual weapons and stuff on each other until the barbarian leaves the fog on the other side. He drinks a fly potion, moves over the fog and lands a devastating blow on the cleric from above, finally killing him.
With a big, bloody grin the elve shrinks down to his normal size, falls on his knees and slams his fist agains his chest screaming: "Hexxtor! Destroy my enemies!"
He dies and triggers death throes, the elve explodes in a 30ft radius blast, dealing 9d8 dmg without any save. Our cleric dies with him. 

The elvish mage is the only enemy left. Sucking up the call lightning spell he tries an ice ray against our mage, but misses again. The barbarian gets close and tries to land a hit, but he has the same nasty ability as our mage: Inst. blink 10ft away whenever you like.
"Lets see... shall I do it?" - "Give it to me!"
The mage pulls up his sleaves and with a movement of his arm he screams "CONE OF COOOOOLD"!!!!! 
The crowd is groggy - but he makes his safe and keeps pushing until the wizzard uses a dim. door to escape.

Now they use every option available to find him, as the plane isnt that big. They finally catch him for the last showdown. He shoots some acid arrows, sc.rays and electric vengeance but isnt able to kill the barbarian, who finally gets a grap and smashes his head with his his mighty hammer.

"YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CANNOT HIDE !!!!"

End of Session #17

The loot was mixed, a nice spell book, wand of slow, a lavender ioun stone with 4 charges remaining, a +2 unholy sword, a +2 dagger of humanbane, elvish chainmail...
Thanks to the "Eye of Tyr" the cleri might be able to come back to live, by meeting his god and stuff... ^^
But for our rogue it looks grimm and I dont see much of a bellievable option to bring him back.

In the end the fight was exactly like I wanted it to be, not hopelessly overpowered but as hard as it could be with a more than real chance to kill all of them.