Bruce (Longfellow Yost) gets sandwich fixings for everyone, which is enough to persuade Mike (Grod Sangaree) and Tim (Anpago Yost) to show up late. They offer lame excuses like cherished and valued relatives visiting from out of town and laundry. Chris (Tonk Sangaree), Chuck (Morgan Sangaree) and Paul all show up and consume massive numbers of sandwiches, much to Bruce's satisfaction. The suggestion is made that we should start without our absent members, but then the cry goes up, "How can we start without Mike and Tim! They are the appendix and gall bladder of the group!" Chuck reflects for a moment and then points out, "But aren't those organs you can live without?" The game starts.
In addition to the characters, the adventuring group includes Tomas Silverleaf the Druid, Saravar Cheslik the Ranger, and Tomas Silverleaf's overdeveloped wolf companion. The characters include Longfellow Yost, Grod Sangaree, Anpago Yost, Tonk Sangaree, Morgan Sangaree, and Yellow-Tusk the boar. They open the game resting in a derelict banquet hall. The group is busy exploring a ruined castle in the depths of the Eastern Forest (better known to the townsfolk of Crobin's Crossroads as either the Forest of Terrors or the Death Woods or sometimes the Murderous Groves).
Their wounds magically healed and their spells regained, the characters head back into the unexplored section of the castle. They head towards a fairly long corridor full of unopened doors.
The first door turns out to lead to an unused storeroom. Everyone is very disappointed about the "unused" part.
The next door seems to be some kind of shrine. An altar stands against the east wall. The walls are decorated with a series of stone carvings that had featured a variety of heroically armored figures, at least before they were rather aggressively defaced. Various bits of graffiti cover those sections of wall that have not otherwise been defaced. Finally, there is an empty metal rack above the altar that might once have contained some sort of devotional object. Morgan Sangaree draws upon his extensive Bardic Lore to try and identify the deity to which the shrine might once have been dedicated. He concludes that the place was probably a shrine. Tonk Sangaree speculates that the missing item that once hung above the altar would have provided a lot of help. Morgan sheepishly agrees. Both Longfellow and Morgan take a look at the graffiti. Morgan is pretty sure that it is Orcish. Longfellow is only willing to admit that it is graffiti. Neither of them can decipher it.
The next room down the hall is a bedroom. Longfellow confidently reports that there are no traps on the door. Tonk kicks the door open, making a lot of noise in the process. The characters see a large four-poster bed in the center. Everything is old and ruined. The mattress is very saggy. Tonk flips over the bed to see what's underneath it. He sees nothing. Both Morgan and Longfellow point out in unison, "But Tonk, don't you see that trap door?"
Tonk pulls the trap door open, eager for hidden treasure. He discovers that there is a poison needle set underneath the door. He looks very curiously at the large amounts of oily green liquid dripping from the wound, then reports to the others, "I have a dry mouth and slight loss of appetite, but otherwise I feel fine." It turns out that there is a large wooden chest lying inside the recess. It is locked, and well beyond the skills of any of the characters to open. They think about setting Grod and his crowbar to it, but note that unlike everything else the chest is in very good shape and cracking it open could be quite difficult. Beyond that, the opening process might injure anything fragile inside. And even beyond that, the chest looks pretty valuable in itself. The characters hold onto it, unopened.
Morgan suggests that the characters should put both of their locked, unopened chests into the recess, close the trap door, and put the bed back in place. This would ensure that they would stay safe until the characters can come back for them later. The others agree. The chests are quickly put into the recess.
The door of the next room has been torn asunder. There are some wooden crates in the northeast corner. Morgan pokes his head in and reports that there is something odd about the floor - the dust is disturbed oddly, as if the floor were sectioned. Longfellow and Tonk can't even see what he's talking about. Tonk humors Morgan by suggesting that the characters should roll some big rocks out into the "disturbed" section of floor. The first rock rolls out, and then vanishes into a very clever pit trap. After the trap has triggered, the floor slides right back up into place. The characters are troubled by the sophistication of the thing. Uninterested in learning what might be at the bottom of the pit, the characters step around the pit trap to investigate the crates. To avoid any future accidents, Longfellow marks the trap location with chalk.
Tonk heads over to the crates and starts breaking them open. He is disappointed to find that most of them are completely empty. Fortunately, one of them contains a rotted bag full of copper coins, hundreds and hundreds of them. Both Tonk and Morgan have sacks, but decide to save them for more important things like Halloween and finding dates ("I jest walked aurt uf the tavahn and semone pulled a sack ovah my head!"). They pour almost one thousand copper coins into a crate and leave it behind for later retrieval.
Delving further into the corridor, the characters find themselves what once someone's sitting room, or perhaps another bedroom. Whoever it belonged to had decorated it with tapestries on the walls and nice furniture. Now everything is decayed and rotted. Tonk pulls the tapestries down. They rip apart and turn into dust. Then the characters search the place. Tonk says, "I found nothing..." Longfellow agrees, "I too found nothing..." Morgan mourns, "I got lost..."
By this time, the characters have really become absorbed by the routine of adventuring. It's all become quite familiar: down the corridor, kick open the door, loot the place blind, then head back down the corridor to the next little payday. And then things change. The next room in the corridor is somewhat larger than the rest, with a very nice spiral staircase going up in the southwest corner. The presence of a facedown human body in the center of the room provides something of an indicator that all might not be well. The body is clad in tattered robes that look as though they were torn in a struggle, possibly by something with long claws. It seems at least theoretically possible that the body might be the body of the wizard the characters originally came to the castle to find. The entire room is suffused with the rich scents of decay and corruption.
Longfellow Yost approaches the body with trepidation, his eyes open for traps. His faithful boar Yellow-tusk follows behind him, snuffling at the flagstones in the vain hopes of locating a tasty truffle or two. Satisfied that the area is clear, Longfellow quickly searches the body with his walking stick. He decides that the body has already been searched. And then the beautiful music pours out of the stairwell. Morgan shouts, "I better do a countersoo... oooh... that's so beautiful..."
Longfellow reacts fastest. He ignores the music and rushes towards the stairwell, blade in hand and cold murder in his heart. Behind him, half of the group is enraptured by the sound, including Morgan, Grod and Yellow-tusk. They meander their way towards the sound, effectively giving Longfellow no way to retreat. Tonk muses, "This explains why there are so few monsters in this dungeon... the stairwell eats us...". He heads to the stairwell and breaks open a sunrod, allowing him to see the harpy in the stairwell.
Longfellow advances on the harpy and executes a series of ineffectual attacks. In return, the harpy savages his internal organs and knocks his head against a wall with a club. Unfortunately, he completely occupies the doorway, preventing anyone else from getting through. Saravar deals with the problem by shooting arrows past him. Longfellow doesn't think that Saravar is deliberately trying to hit him, but Saravar's aim does leave a certain amount of room for doubt. With only instants to live, Longfellow moves in past the harpy, which gives Grod and Morgan an opportunity to move their enraptured asses into the stairwell. He makes one desperate slash that scratches the harpy, then gets laid flat by her return attack.
Tonk manages to land a miraculous ricochet bank shot into the harpy's back. She looks very angry and lightly wounded. She flies out to attack Tonk personally. She rolls a 19 to hit him, laying him open. Tonk curses, "Bitch." He drops his bow, pulls out his greatsword and delivers a solid hit upon her. Then Saravar's wolf grabs the harpy and pulls her down to the ground. He's just a damn strong wolf, apparently with both stats and morals that are superior to those of the PC's. Tonk chops the harpy again, then watches as the wolf tears the harpy's throat out. Tonk refrains from petting the wolf, but assures it, "Good wolf... good wolf..." Then the wolf starts to eat. Tonk shudders, "That's so wrong." Morgan reassures him, "Circle of life, dude. Circle of life."
The instant the harpy's throat is severed, the beautiful sounds stop and the enthrallment vanishes. Happily back to normal, Grod tells the others, "We need to search the area for harpy treasure!" Heedless of the harpy's indifferent housekeeping, the characters quickly tear apart her nest. They are annoyed to notice that it was made from spellbook pages. Further search uncovers a stash hidden under a loose brick in the staircase, though in the process of finding it Morgan got lost in the room. Again. Inside the alcove the characters find:
Longfellow quickly casts Detect Magic and determines that the gloves and wand are magical. Grod immediately tries on the magic gloves and discovers that they fit perfectly. They must be Gloves of Perfect Fit.
Grod mentions that he has a Cloak of Elvenkind (+10 Hide if the hood is drawn up). He trades it to Longfellow for a Cloak of +1 Resistance (+1 to all saving throws).
The druid Tomas looks over the treasures with a greedy eye. He lights upon the huge blue stone and points out, "You realize that gems like this are worth quite a bit. And you don't necessarily need to hand it over to that noble. You could just give it to me and tell the noble that the wizard sold it in Port Delour. Then I could sell it and give you half of the proceeds." The characters indicate that they gave their word to the bounty hunters, and they're giving the gem to them in exchange for the halfling's life. And that there is nothing Tomas can do to stop them. Listening to Tomas talk, Morgan decides that the druid is simply greedy. The characters quickly establish that Tomas and Saravar very much expect to have a share of the treasure and the magical items.
Laden with their treasures, the characters head back out through the forest, accompanied by Tomas, Saravar and Tomas' wolf. Tonk is in the lead, apparently heedless of the fact that the group includes three supposed experts in woodcraft. As it happens, this is quite fortunate. Not long along the journey, he spots a creature hunched over a carcass next to the path. Tonk, Tomas and Saravar approach. They find that the creature is a gnoll, eating a deer. Tonk notices that the gnoll's idea of table manners leaves quite a lot to be desired. He asks Tomas, "Is this a friend of yours, or can we kill it?" Tomas responds, "This one is known to me..." It develops that this one is also known to the ranger Saravar, who calls out, "Kr'garsh! What are you doing here alone?"
Kr'garsh stands up from the bloody remains of his midday luncheon and growls out, "Urrgh... Was just... walking through forest... to see a friend..." The characters notice that Kr'garsh is wearing studded leather armor and carrying a battleaxe. Tonk whispers to Grod, "It's not obvious, but he's challenging you..." Grod ignores Tonk, though it's really hard.
The conversation continues on long enough for the characters to learn that Kr'garsh's tribe lives in the forest, and that he is on good relations with Tomas and Saravar.
Nobody is particularly upset about learning these things until Tomas and Saravar turn to face the characters. Tomas yells out, "Kr'garsh! You may be the ally we need! Help us kill these others and we will split the treasure!"
Morgan sees how things are going and quickly throws a dart into Tomas. Then things fall apart so fast characters get hit with the pieces. Tomas busies himself with a scroll to erase the effects of Morgan's dart strike, while his dramatically healthy wolf charges into Morgan and attempts to tear him to shreds. Longfellow does his best to save Morgan's life with a quick Calm Animals spell, only to discover that the wolf is unimpressed by such feeble magic. Fortunately, the wolf is more impressed by Morgan's swordsmanship, as the bard manages to connect very solidly. Morgan delivers a critical hit against the wolf and almost fells the creature. "I'm getting' me a nice coat!" The wolf makes one final attack at Morgan, hurting him, then gets crushed by Yellow-tusk. Morgan watches the boar savage the wolf's body and mourns, "There goes my coat..."
Saravar rushes at Tonk swinging his longsword. Tonk takes a pretty substantial hit, discovering in the process that Rangers do not have to be Good. And that they can take humans as a favored enemy. And that things can always get worse, as Saravar draws a shortsword with his left hand. The cherry on the top is the discovery that Druids don't have to be Good either... Fortunately, evil rangers often spend more time working on being evil than they do on their swordsmanship. Saravar's wild second swing at Tonk, doesn't even come close. Grod steps into the situation, unleashes a single devastating swing at Saravar's back, and fells him instantly. While Tonk moves off to deal with the gnoll Kr'garsh, Grod stays behind to finish Saravar off with a series of crunchy, juicy head blows.
Yellow-tusk gores the druid Tomas, who staggers from the impact. Tomas rather desperately throws Daze Animal at Yellow-tusk, confusing him for long enough to allow the evil druid to throw an Obscuring Mist and retreat.
Anpago and Kr'garsh engage in a short magical duel: Anpago hurls a Sleep at Kr'garsh, who shrugs the spell off and sends his own Sleep back at Anpago. Anpago slumps to the ground, a dreamy smile on his face. Longfellow tries to help out by whacking Anpago upside the head with his walking stick, hoping to wake him up. He doesn't hit him hard enough. Anpago stays blissfully asleep. In his dreams, he murmurs, "I hate this game..."
His battle with Saravar over, Tonk charges Kr'garsh. He only recently bought himself the Improved Disarm feat, and he is eager to try it out on the gnoll. He is crestfallen to discover that Kr'garsh does not actually have weapon drawn. His disappointment is so great that the attack he actually makes is completely ineffectual. Kr'garsh unlimbers his battleaxe and makes an equally ineffectual attack against Tonk. By this time, both Anpago and Grod have joined the battle. Kr'garsh doesn't last long against the three characters. Grod gets the final hit on Kr'garsh, flattening the gnoll. He picks up something wet and red from the ground and asks Tonk, "Souvenir?" Tonk grimaces, "No thanks, you can have it..."
With the sounds of violence dying down, Morgan and Longfellow move through the obscuring mist effect to search for the escaping druid. Neither of them find anything except more mist. Longfellow scouts around the flanks rather briefly under the cover of his flashy new Cloak of Elvenkind, but finds nothing. He attempts to track, and deduces that Tomas used Pass Without Trace and can't be tracked. Morgan discovers that Tomas didn't simply run: he also took the small iron box from the wagon.
The characters search the bodies of Saravar and Kr'garsh, finding several nice things. Kr'garsh has:
Saravar possessed:
Morgan casts Detect Magic and determines that none of it is magical except the potions.
After some debate, the characters decide to package up the two bodies and take them back to town to complain to the locals. As Crobin's Crossroads is still more than a day's travel away, the characters are forced to spend a night in the forest before their journey ends. Everyone sleeps on the wagons, except for Longfellow who sleeps in a tree with the Cloak of Elvenkind.
Early in the morning Morgan and Grod are on watch. They hear something large coming towards the camp. They can't see anything, but they still feel threatened so they start waking people up. Soon enough, a big owlbear lumbers into camp. The characters prepare for its attack. Anpago plinks the creature with a quick crossbow bolt. Tonk fights extremely defensively against the creature, but still takes a very substantial claw hit to the chest. Morgan draws his sword and steps up to assist, drawing blood. Tonk takes another hit. Morgan delivers another. Longfellow sneaks up from behind and drives his scimitar into the owlbear's back. It lets out a screech of rage and injury. Then Grod finally slays the creature.
Longfellow guts and skins the creature and Grod cooks the results up for breakfast. Morgan looks at his plate and asks, "Is this actually edible?" Longfellow, drawing upon his druidic powers, assures him that it is.
The characters pick up their other owlbear skin and make it back to town without further incident.
The characters hand over the gem to the bounty hunters. The two hunters are perfectly willing to both give back the halfling thief Kiro, and to put in a good word for the characters with Lord Kildari Dostavar (the rightful owner of the gem). The less-optimistic characters suggest that this will mean that Lord Dostavar will have some terribly unpleasant task for them when they get to Highthrone.
Tonk sits Kiro down in front of the wooden chest and tells him, "Unlock. Now." Kiro displays a tremendous understanding of which side of his bread the blood is on and cooperates without a word. The chest turns out to contain:
Morgan determines that the scroll is Silence. Silence is on the Bard list, but he can't use it because he can only use arcane scrolls. The chest itself is made of ironwood and weighs 50 lb. It has hardness 8, hit points 30, a break difficulty of 26 and a lock with DC 25 to open. The characters decide to keep it around as a convenient place to store their valuables.
The characters take the bodies of Saravar and Kr'garsh to the local lawman, Constable Devenn. Tonk and Morgan try to lead off the explanation, but neither of them are very coherent. The Constable quickly becomes confused by the particulars of the situation, "Were you on a road? Or a path? And where did the woods come in to it? And you say you had a cart?" Morgan finally manages to explain that the characters were traveling through the forest, escorted by the ranger Saravar Cheslik and the druid Tomas Silverleaf. They met up with a gnoll called Kr'garsh. Saravar and Tomas were quite friendly with the gnoll, and made a quick compact with it to kill the characters in exchange for a third of their treasure. Saravar and Kr'garsh were killed in the ensuing battle, but Tomas the druid escaped.
Morgan also mentions that the gnoll Kr'garsh was some kind of magician, and cast several spells during the battle.
The Constable Devenn tells the characters that there have been a lot of cattle gone missing recently. It has long been his suspicion that someone has been helping the forest gnolls to steal livestock. Tonk helpfully points out that Kr'garsh said that others of his tribe lived in the area.
Constable Devenn asks if the characters have any proof beyond their word. The characters indicate that at this point they have only their word (and the bodies). Grod misunderstands the Constable's question and offers to defend his word upon the field of honor. Longfellow whispers to Grod, "Ix-nay on the ield-fay of onor-hay." Tonk suggests that the characters will be around for a few days, and that if the Constable is able to arrange for a high-enough level Cleric to cast Speak With Dead the characters are willing to fork over a Silence scroll and some spare change to pay for the spell.
The Constable reassures Tonk, "Frankly, I'm inclined to believe you. That boy's been nothing but trouble for years. But his parents are good people. He takes more after his crazy aunt." The Constable promises to go talk to Tomas' parents about the incident. It seems clear that the Constable is not interested in pursuing any sort of legal action against the characters for Saravar's death.
After talking to the Constable, the characters head over to the Dancing Badger to split their loot, have a drink and get Tonk a bath. The money divides up into one share of 5 platinum, 54 gold, 23 silver and 200 copper for each character. They hire the wizard Wisteria Falkirk to identify their magic items. The total effort costs all five pearls plus 4 gp per character (which must be subtracted from the shares above). Wisteria is able to identify three items for 30 gp and a pearl. She tells the characters that:
Dust of Disguise is poured over the desired recipient. The recipient takes on whatever appearance the user desires for the next 1d6+6 hours. If the recipient is unwilling, they get a DC 11 save.
Each character gets one potion of Cure Light Wounds, except for Grod who gets the Cure Moderate Wounds potion. Anpago gets the Wand of Light. Nobody feels very strongly about the Gloves of Swimming, so it remains in the common pool. Longfellow gets the potion of Hide.
Grod goes out and upgrades his cart to a wagon with two horses.
Anpago hands Longfellow 10 gp and asks him to make 30 masterwork silvered crossbow bolts. Longfellow hands the money back and explains that it would take a miracle for him to make any masterwork items, given that his total bonus for Craft (bowmaking) is only +4.
Anpago Yost summons himself a toad for a familiar (+2 CON, leaving him with 22 hp). Longfellow Yost is envious of Anpago's hit points.
Tonk forks over 100 gp for three trained guard dog and a big pile of goat jerky. Then he makes four owlbear cloaks, one for each of Anpago, Tonk and Morgan, and a spare in case one of them gets cut to pieces. The cloaks have an upper ruff of owl feathers, and a lower skirt of bearskin. They really look quite sharp.
Morgan finally manages to encounter the local Bard Sparrow, who tells him that he has heard of the song Morgan played for the satyr Tandric. He can tell Morgan where to find a masterwork instrument, but he would very much like to hear the song he played for Tandric. Morgan obliges. Sparrow is terribly impressed.
Longfellow, Tonk and Morgan each gain 1207 experience points. Grod gets 1007 experience points. Anpago gains only 670 experience points. Everyone gains a level except for Grod, who stays at the hairy edge of 2nd.