First Party, Session One, Part 3

I've started playing back my audio recording of the game at 1.33x speed, so welcome to our first installment of "Alvin and the Chipmunks Play Dungeons And Dragons".

The dwarf volunteers to go down first. On the way down, he notes the runes "VIII" carved into the wall (He's about 4 rungs down when he sees this). He knows this is an ancient way to write the number eight. He thinks for a minute, decides this must be a number of rooms or opponents or traps at the bottom, and continues.

This is the youngest player. I let him go with what he decides. I slooowly count down the rungs he's on - I put up my hand, 4 fingers. "Four". Five fingers. "Five rungs." Second hand - 6 fingers. "Rung Number Six". I'm hamming it up, he's raptly paying attention, as if expecting something cool. "Rung Seven". Eight fingers - "You're about to  place your foot on Rung Number Eight."

No reaction. I announce the rung has broken under his weight, and he's fallen 20 ft, taking 9 points of damage. He looks hurt. I feel bad.

The party troops down the corridor - the drow marching up front, misses the tripwire across the hallway, and gets hit upside the head with a club swinging from the ceiling.

I'm playing a little loose with the thief/spot skill rolls. Unless it's a *horrible* roll, I'll let them figure something out so they can infer enough to not get trapped.

The enter a study - there's bookshelves, an alchemist's lab, a coatrack with some coats and a broom, and three other exits. The druid casts Detect Magic. There's 4 magical potions on the alchemy table, 2 magical books in the bookshelf, and the broom is magic.

Knibbs moves to grab one of the magical books (Golems for Dummies) and it, and it's companion volume, fly out of the bookshelf and begin to bounce around the room. They're quickly dispatched by the drow and the dwarf ranger. The druid moves (in that same round) to grab the broom, which immediately animates and attempts to attack her. The elf noble quickly splits it in twain with a superb arrow shot.

Off to the left, there's a wooden portcullis blocking a lit chamber that seems to be full of wooden cages - a hammering sound can be heard. The drow and dwarf break through the portcullis, and the party enters the room.

Success! The townsfolk are found - a bit beat up, but alive. In the far corner of the room a dwarf works on another cage.

 "That's not me." says the youngest, playing the dwarf. "No, it's not. It's another dwarf". "I bet it's the dead one we put in the coffin.". 'No,' I say, "this one looks alive. He's got skin on him and stuff." 'Is it the one-armed one?' 'No, totally a different dwarf.'

The druid, noting the dwarf lightly glows with enchantment, figures he's charmed - he hasn't noticed the (loud) party yet. The thief sneaks down to club him unconscious, manages to accidently knock his heel with her toes, and the dwarf looks back at her. "Hello! How are things?" he says, a bit glassy eyed, as he overlooks her hastily hiding her sap and goes back to work.

Dale shrugs, and starts inspecting the locks. That gets the dwarf's hackles up, and he turns, still holding his hammer. "What's that all about? You can't be doing that. What are you doing?"

"The, uh, Commissioner said it was OK?" Knibbs throws out. 'There's no commissioner. There's the wizard.' "The wizard is called the Commissioner." 'No,' says the dwarf, 'it's Suto'. "Yes, I know. He said it was OK." The dwarf thinks a bit. 'No, no. Let's go talk to him right now'.  "I'm right behind you." says Knibbs, who attempts to hit the dwarf with the flat of his blade as he storms past.

Complete miss, as does the drow. The dwarf is focused enough on getting to Suto he doesn't even notice the breeze from the two-handed swords barely missing the back of his head. The dwarf uplander finally knocks him down with the pommel of one of his axes, however.

The party frees the townsfolk, sets the dwarf in a cage for now, and then convinces the townsfolk that the party's wolves will safely escort them into view of the town.

They ransack the next room, which was a bedroom. There's some magical research on the desk, mostly on summoning extraplanar creatures. There's a pair of thick leather gloves under the bed.There was a chest in the room - the rogue pokes around with a stick and hears the hiss of a snake - the druid steps over, talks the snake out of the chest, and the party retrieves a blank spellbook, a diary, a set of ten keys, and a handful of amethysts.

The party heads out to the last tunnel, drow in the lead. An alcove to the right catches his attention, and he turns the corner to find an enormous mushroom, with odd vent-looking structures on its crown. It immediately begins to swell up, as if breathing in. The party attacks, downs it quickly, and it deflates with a sad little squeak.

At the end of the tunnel there is a set of stone doors. The dwarf walks in, and sees an older man filling an arcane summoning circle pattern with molten silver. The man looks up - "You're not my dwarf." 'Yes I am. You're just going crazy.' replies the dwarf. "I may be, but you're supposed to be building me my cages. Get back to it." 'OK, I will.' says the dwarf, and steps back and closes the door.

There is quite a bit of discussion about what to do next, as the dwarf relates this all to the party. There's an enormous, roughly (and poorly) carved stone frog, with giant gems for eyes, and a brazier next to the summoning circle. There's a small hole in the ground in front of the frog, which goes straight down.

The youngest: "There's a silver circle, with a hole in the ground in front of a giant stone frog. There's an angry old man in there. He thought I was the dwarf."

While that goes on, there's muffled conversation going on in the room - an odd, small, evil voice speaks to the wizard:

(muffled evil voice)
"Well you should have told me that while he was here."
(muffled evil voice)
"Fine. I will. Calm down. I'll take care of it."
(muffled evil voice, dismissively ending the conversation)

Knibb's familiar notes, as it peeks it's head slowly into the room through the crack of the door, he now has a pair of spent scrolls at his feet.

The party charges in. Knibbs throws a Charm Person, which the wizard shrugs off. The old man summons a quartet of Lemures, which the party's warriors attack. The wizard backs off, and tosses a Wall of Smoke across the room, disappearing behind the barrier.

The lemures are dispatched, and the party moves behind the wall. The wizard has Levitated, and seems to be immune to normal missiles, as well as shielded. It's a slog of a battle - the Druid summons 4 giant bees, which are lightly effective with their stingers. Most of the party is engaged with a summoned hero the wizard has called, which is evidently a hero from the Lower Planes, being a beast of multiple arms and a gaping maw with two rows of teeth. That melee is occuring on top of the giant, rough-carved frog statue.

The dragon attempts to blow away a portion of the smoke with his wings, to no effect.

The wizard webs the bees, and starts to pull himself along the wall to get out of the corner he's backed into. The druid summons a very small earth elemental to harrass the wizard at his level, and the elf noble gives the dwarf a Spider Climb to climb up to his level. Further missile attacks are ignored, and the wizard takes an action to Dispel the Spider Climb.

The drow misses attempt to leap from the frog to grab the wizard.

The summoned demon is getting beat up pretty handily, and the wizard starts to panic - he makes a mistake pulling himself along the wall (trusting chance) and is felled by the wood elf princess and the drow. The demon is taken down the very next turn.

We ended right there - we'd ran pretty long on this. Audacity says this was about a 4 1/2 hour long gaming session, with a break for lunch, we went from around 11AM to about 6PM. We'll do treasure and experience and an 'epilogue' of sorts in email.