Chris (Tonk Sangaree) calls ahead to point out that the rest of us can do whatever we want for lunch, because he's not going to make it. Tim (Anpago Yost) calls out, "Let's get Indian buffet! Chris never lets us go get Indian buffet!" Chuck (Darg Sangaree) growls, "No, I'm the one who thinks Indian buffet looks like animal wastes. Let's not go get Indian buffet." He suggests Delaware. Bruce (Longfellow Yost) offers, "Ooh! Delaware is a great state! And it tastes really good!" Nobody else understands what Bruce is talking about, so they assiduously ignore him. Paul and Billy (Andrinor) just complain that they are savagely hungry and want to go anywhere, now! We go get food.
The characters think that they're peacefully minding their own business, but it turns out that they've picked up some really dramatic enemies who send villains off to slaughter them.
Longfellow dedicates himself to the project of establishing a nest and raising up some little crag eaglets. He pays peasants to gather sticks and hay for him. One day, he notices that one of the peasants is standing next to the pile, waiting for him. He lands and asks, "Awk! What's up, Rupert?" He immediately notices that the local temperature has dropped very dramatically. He also notices that Rupert is casting Web at him. He evades the sticky strands easily, then quickly casts an Obscuring Mist around himself. He squawks out, "What are you doing, Rupert?" Rupert responds by throwing a Fireball at him, burning away both the webs and the mist. With the mist out of the way, Longfellow is able to see Rupert's face twist and ooze and become surprisingly similar to Tomas Silverleaf's face. Longfellow remembers that when Tomas Silverleaf ran off so long ago, his brother ran off with him. He decides that he must be facing Talbot Silverleaf. Longfellow decides that Talbot has been engaging in some very questionable social practices, as there is some sort of dark mold or fur protruding from the lower edge of his robe.
Longfellow summons up a dire ape to attack Talbot Silverleaf. He sees frost crystals form on the dire ape's fur as it takes damage just from being next to the magician. Talbot backs away as something horrible, yellow and mucousy flows from underneath his robe and attacks the ape. The uncaring universe informs Longfellow that Talbot is probably an Ooze Master. Longfellow gawks, "He's a what? Where the hell did that come from?" Longfellow watches as the ooze attempts to constrict the ape and choke the life out of it. Then he dodges a Lightning Bolt and heads into the woods.
Behind him, Longfellow's slightly drunken dire ape staggers around delivering off-balance blows as Ooze Master Talbot's slimy friends open up on it. It isn't helped by the fact that physical attacks on oozes cause them to break into multiple pieces. The ape gazes mournfully in the direction Longfellow flew and moans, "Why you abandon Bobo?" only instants before it is killed by four oozes. Longfellow sprints into the woods and gets away.
Darg Sangaree has lately been spending a lot of quality time with Lydia, formerly a member of Black Rain, but today finds him at the characters' rented rooms with Andrinor. The two of them are in the common room, trying to write letters to various government officials. Andrinor is only barely able to tolerate Darg's endless complaints about how hard it is to suddenly be an elf. He consoles himself by reflecting that Darg could also be boasting about how his social life is going so much better than that of any of the other group members.
Darg looks up from the letter he is mangling to ask Andrinor, "How many l's are there in 'Lackey'?" Then the doorknob opens and a massive giant snake slithers in. Andrinor comments, "Gee, what a polite giant snake!" The two of them draw weapons.
Darg asks Andrinor, "Do you think there's any chance that this is some kind of messenger?" Andrinor responds, "Well, it is carrying an official messenger's pouch in its mouth, but it also looks like it has been whipped into a reptilian killing frenzy." Darg brings up a Divine Favor. The snake rips into him. Darg is shocked as the snake's venom takes effect and drains away five points of his CON. Darg exclaims, "What! I never fail Fortitude saves! I am a veritable Fortress of Fortitude!"
Things get markedly worse when Tomas Silverleaf steps in and casts a spell at Andrinor. Andrinor examines Tomas' gestures and decides that he's casting a Charm spell. Then he suddenly realizes that Tomas is actually his friend. His very, very good friend. Darg groans and thinks, "Ohhh... I don't see this going well at all." Fortunately, Andrinor is still able to act against the snake. He throws a Flare at the creature. The snake barely even notices. Then it tears Darg to shreds. And sucks away two more points of his CON. Darg drops with -13 hit points.
Andrinor watches as Tomas casts Dominate Animal over the snake. Andrinor is very glad to see that his new friend is bringing that vicious animal under control. Tomas checks over Darg's body. Andrinor tearfully tells Tomas, "I know there's nothing you can do for him. But we need to take him over to the priests of Pelor, or maybe to Longfellow. Longfellow has really become quite the healer." Tomas tells him, "Hold on, I can take you instantly. Just hold on to me." Tomas whirls his cloak about and they all vanish in a puff of smoke.
Tonk Sangaree and Anpago Yost are down at the construction site, supervising. A halfling messenger runs up and announces that he has a message. Tonk accepts the wrapped parchment, then notices that the halfling is still there. The little fellow explains that he was instructed to wait for a reply. Tonk opens the parchment to see a very familiar rune. He also notes that the paper is slightly oily, and his fingers are starting to tingle. He yells out, "I drop the paper and kill me a halfling! Try to poison me, you bastard!"
Anpago is jarred into activity by the sudden shouting. He drops his pixie stick and quickly throws Haste on Tonk. Tonk evades the halfling's initial attack, then quickly sucks down an antitoxin vial and flails out with his greatsword. The halfling grimaces in pain, but manages to shake off Anpago's Hold Person and inflict a nasty scratch on Tonk. Tonk and his antitoxin pretty much ignore the halfling. Tonk hits him again, then watches as Anpago nails the halfling with a Cold Orb. The halfling steps back, takes an attack of opportunity from Tonk, and casts Obscuring Mist. Tonk rushes into the mist and swings. Anpago, having recently learned that flame spells will dispose of Obscuring Mist, lets fly with a Fireball. This wipes out the mist, but it also covers Tonk with a uniform layer of char. The mist vanishes, but the halfling is nowhere to be seen. Anpago and Tonk search the area but fail to find him.
Then Anpago tries Detect Thoughts. He figures out that the halfling assassin is both in the room and is very confused about where the Fireball came from. The characters set up overwatch on the site in time to see the halfling make a run for it. Tonk tries to run the little fellow down while Anpago sprays him with Magic Missiles. The halfling runs to a cliff edge and tumbles over. Tonk, who already knows that the cliff is only ten feet high, simply leaps after the halfling, howling out, "I'm gonna chop you into little bits, you wizened gnome!" The halfling, who had thought he was getting away clean, is shocked to feel Tonk's greatsword stab him through the lung from behind. The halfling turns around, feints to the right, then stabs Tonk straight through the guts. Tonk proceeds to become paralyzed, to lose 5 points of STR, and to take 24 points of damage. Tonk decides that he should re-evaluate his previous low opinion of halfling assassins.
Angered by the needless paralyzing of his friend, Anpago nails the halfling with Tasha's Hideous Laughter then shoots him up with Magic Missiles until he falls. It only takes two. Tonk thinks, "I really love my cousin Anpago. I can't express that in words right now, but there are tears coming from my eyes." Anpago thinks about stabilizing the dying halfling to keep him around as a prisoner, but only has some grass and monk-spit available in his first-aid kit. Anpago decides to worry about his cousin instead, while he watches the halfling wheeze to death through his sucking chest wound. A few rounds on, Tonk comes out of his paralysis.
Anpago drags the body back into the construction site. Being very perceptive, he notices that when the halfling dies, it's body changes appearance into that of a goblin. The sort of goblin who lives in the Spider Woods. This doesn't do anything to prevent Anpago from searching the body for magical goodies. He comes up with:
The bag is very obviously a Bag of Holding. It contains various personal effects. It does not, sadly, include a scroll saying, "Please kill the characters for a lot of money. Yours truly, the Master Villain."
At this point Longfellow flies up to tell his own story of ambush and bloodshed. The characters deduce that Andrinor and Darg will have also been attacked and immediately head up to the villa in town. All they find is a lot of blood and damaged furniture. Longfellow draws upon his inhuman tracking skills and proceeds to tell the entire story of Darg and Andrinor's doomed struggle against a huge snake. The blood on the floor is mostly elf and snake, with an emphasis upon elf. He can sense traces of some kind of venom as well. The snake was clearly wounded twice by Darg, and left wounded. Longfellow thinks that a poisonous snake this size would have to be a dire snake, and it looks like it would be on the upper end of the size scale for dire snakes. And the fact that Tomas' brother attacked Longfellow suggests that Tomas might have been here as well. He can find some humanoid tracks that simply vanish without leaving the room, lending credence to this theory.
The characters resolve to hunt down their missing comrades' attackers and bring bloody vengeance upon them.
Longfellow tracks the snake. The creature slithered out into the nearby grasslands, and then into a cave. Tonk hands his Goggles of Night to Anpago, who flies into the cave in search of huge snakes. He comes into a cavern where he can see Andrinor bound and gagged. Tomas and Talbot Silverleaf are chatting with each other. Their big snake sits off to the side, playing with Darg's body.
The characters assemble very quietly at the cavern entrance, then swiftly fall upon the Silverleaf brothers with horrible vengeance in their hearts. Anpago leads off by throwing a Fireball at Talbot Silverleaf. He takes out two of the four jellies slithering around Talbot's feet, but doesn't seem to hurt Talbot at all. Even worse, the strange brown fuzz around Talbot's feet grows out to cover a patch of the floor. A strange chill fills the room.
Longfellow calls up his Marble Elephant of Wondrous Power and sends it charging at Tomas Silverleaf. Tomas staggers under the impact of the creature's charge. Then he takes control of the elephant with a quick Dominate Animal. The jellies and the snake move to attack. Anpago asks Longfellow, "Why do we keep on attacking druids with animals? You just handed a 100+ hit point ally over to Tomas!" Tonk adds, "You know, every time we've fought Tomas he's been pretty effective, and he's a druid. Why don't you do some stuff like he does?" In exasperation, Anpago modifies the dire snake's worldview with a Charm Monster spell, then realizes that giving the creature actual commands requires that he speak its language. He takes some consolation in the fact that the snake will no longer attack him.
Anpago pops up, zaps Talbot with a quick Tasha's Hideous Laughter, then moves to interpose himself between Tonk and the snake. He notices that as Talbot laughs he starts to lose control of himself and starts bubbling and oozing in disturbing, mind-warping ways. Tonk steps to the left and shoots some arrows into laughing-ooze-boy.
Longfellow quickly says the command word for the Marble Elephant to get the creature out of the picture, then throws a Flaming Sphere on top of Tomas. Tomas is looking pretty badly burned by this time. He whirls his cloak around, then swears as he realizes that his Cloak of the Mountebank only works once per day. He compromises by throwing a Flame Strike at Tonk, Anpago and Longfellow. Tonk complains, "I ask again, why aren't you doing cool things like Tomas? Did he maybe go to a different druid school than you did? Perhaps you shouldn't have put such reliance on those druid-by-mail correspondence classes."
By this time, Andrinor's ice para-elemental familiar has freed him from his bonds. He realizes that his good friend Tomas is being very badly burned by a Flaming Sphere. Andrinor squeals out, "Tomas! They're killing you! You've got to escape!" Then he throws Gaseous Form on the druid. Anpago deals with the situation by whacking Tomas with a couple of Magic Missiles. Tomas' rather gaseous body flows across the floor. Suddenly Andrinor realizes that he actually hates Tomas because the druid threw a Charm spell on him. Tomas is pretty much stuck: he's bleeding to death, but he's also gaseous so giving him any sort of first aid is well nigh impossible.
Longfellow fries one jelly with his Flaming Sphere, then rather uselessly attempts to distract Talbot with Summon Swarm. Unfortunately, Talbot's freezing mold defenses instantly destroy Longfellow's spiders as they appear. Longfellow spends a moment cursing, which distracts him long enough to allow the dire snake to practically chew him in half.
Andrinor observes the way druid magic is failing to deal with Talbot's defenses and resolves to deal with the situation. He throws a Lightning Bolt at the magician, then has his familiar throw an Icicle to follow it up.
Anpago notices that the snake is busily killing his friends and does his best to persuade it to go and kill the ooze master. He stuns everyone else by succeeding.
In a snit, Longfellow fries the last jelly. He angrily chirps at Tonk, "See! See! Druid magic just took out a very dangerous ochre jelly! And I only needed Anpago's Fireball to weaken it first! Hah!" Tonk rolls his eyes and nocks another arrow.
Tobias finally finishes laughing. He attacks Andrinor with hands that have transformed into dripping purplish jelly. Andrinor gets rather seriously burned. He responds by directing another Icicle-and-Lightning Bolt barrage at Tobias. Tobias falls. Tonk shoots a couple more arrows into him, just to make sure.
Anpago spends some time persuading the snake to leave the group alone. Longfellow helps.
The characters find themselves in command of a cave full of bodies. Everyone realizes quickly that Andrinor has become obsessed with finding applications for either the cold mold or the remains of the ooze master. Tonk talks sense to him until he agrees to just take a few samples. It eventually turns out that Tobias was wearing a rather stained and disgusting magical robe. He also had a single scroll and a potion. Tonk takes a look at the potion vial and tells the others, "I am so not sampling that potion." The scroll turns out to be an arcane scroll with a 4th level spell Anpago has never seen before: Control Ooze.
Tomas Silverleaf proves to have been carrying quite a variety of very nice stuff:
The characters take Darg's body back to the rooming house and make preparations for bringing him back. They leave the bodies of the Silverleaf brothers where they fell.
The next morning, Longfellow prepares a Reincarnation spell and casts it on Darg's body. Darg reappears to the characters in the shape of a centaur. Tonk does his best to persuade Darg that being a centaur is really cool, and that he should continue to travel with his relatives. Unfortunately, most of Tonk's arguments revolve around how much Darg's horse half can carry and how cheap it would be to use him as a beast of burden, rather than relying upon mules and oxen. Darg is unconvinced. He can feel the fiery spirit of the plains speaking to him, and he tells the others that he must answer its call and run. He gallops off into the sunset with Friday the bear at his side.
The characters already have several pieces of very nice jewelry around from their efforts to plunder Harsef's Tomb, including:
The total value of these goods is 2300 gold. Tonk arranges to have them converted into cash and distributed among the characters.
Anpago, Andrinor and Longfellow work to identify all of the magical goods with a combination of alchemy, Identify (funded by the platinum necklace), and Read Magic. The various objects are:
Longfellow takes the Phylactery of Faithfulness (Obad-Hai). And the two Quaal's Feather Tokens. And the various druid spells. And the wand of Cure Light Wounds. And the Gray Bag of Tricks. Anpago takes the three Dark Vision potions. Anpago and Andrinor split up the wizard spells so they can learn Control Ooze. Tonk takes one Neutralize Poison potion; Andrinor gets the other. Tonk gets the Cure Serious Wounds potion. Andrinor takes the Cape of the Mountebank. The Robe of Blending, the +1 Studded Leather and the +1 Buckler are kept in reserve for Marcus Sangaree, who is scheduled to show up sooner or later. Tonk takes the Bag of Holding.
The characters' second cousin Marcus Sangaree arrives in the city with stories of having journeyed through a war zone. He reports that the nation of Davra is undergoing both political upheaval and attack. The northern orcs have attacked and already sacked two cities. The King of Davra put out a call to arms in response, but the Southern nobles, rather than crossing over the bridge at Crobin's Crossing, simply fortified the bridge and declared themselves independent. They say the goblins in the Spider Woods are very active, and they cannot afford to send away all their knights to the North, for fear that as soon as their troops leave, the goblins will just destroy all the Southern cities. Duke Morris of Oakwood has proclaimed himself King of the South. And still the orcs rampage through the North.
Each character gains 1400 experience points. Anpago and Tonk each gain 1200 additional experience points.