ToEE: Mid-Season Cast Replacements

Game Date: 5/7/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Balthazar a.k.a. "Phredd" (Ted): Half-Elf Bard
Calla Noble (Matt): Human Knight
Inphy (Star): Half-Orc Slayer
Joanna Winters (Jesse): Human Archer Ranger
Jerry (Nick): Human Cleric
Kossack (Cliff): Minotaur Fighter
Krusk (Rick): Half-Orc Monk
Malagar (Bryan): Drow Rogue

New Characters:
After helping rescue some prisoners from the Temple last session, Kryla feels that her work here is done. She knew the stars had sent her here for a reason, and now she believes the stars are guiding her somewhere else. Meanwhile, Durbin is thoroughly disgusted by our group's lack of toughness, and is leaving to seek bigger challenges. Nyx and Pixie are is also leaving, for reasons of their own. Jerry, Kossack, and Krusk wondered how to proceed - after all, they were barely surviving already. With more than half the party gone, they couldn't possibly defeat the evils of the Temple.

Don't Laugh, I'm Serious! 

- Jerry's Motto

The Session:
Our session begins in Hommlet.  Jerry was trying to buy an item from Calmert at the church, but didn't have enough money.  Calmert offered the item in exchange for a favor.  He wants Jerry to help him become an adventurer.

That night at Hommlet's inn, Jerry, Kossack, and Krusk were sleeping when there was a ruckus in the hallway.  Jerry and Kossack shared a room, in which they were attacked by a Dajani Tiefling who told them "Lareth sends his regards."  In the hallway, pirates were kicking in the doors of all the inn's rooms.  All the inn's residents gradually woke up and faced the pirates.  Calla had to join the battle without her armor, but luckily they didn't do a whole lot of damage.

After setting fire to the inn, more pirates came up the stairs.  The pirates were easy to kill, but the constantly-teleporting Dajani took a few rounds to finish off.  Once it was dead, we found a contract on the body.  It was written from "H", and was an order to kill the party.  Most of the party went downstairs to put out the fire.  Calla missed that part of the fun because it took her so long to put her armor on.

Later, Jerry visited a shrine, and found a hidden note written to H.  The note was written in Elvish, so he had to get it translated.  It basically said, "The plan is in motion.  I will burn down the inn tonight.  Leave the payment in the usual spot."  He put the note back where he found it, and set a plan of his own in motion.  He had Joanna find a good hiding spot, and wait for someone to retrieve the note.

At dawn, someone eventually came for the note, and Joanna shot them.  Jerry recognized the body as one of the men-at-arms from the Trader's.  This got Jerry in a bit of hot water, and an investigation has begun.  We figured it might be a good idea to leave town for a while.  Requesting the help of his new friends from the inn fight, a new party formed and we headed back to the Temple of Elemental Evil.

The ride was uneventful, and we hid the cart once again.  Once through the gates, we we followed the path towards the temple, and realized we were being watched.  Several flocks of ravens sat on the outer walls.  (Trivia time:  A flock of ravens is called an "unkindness", mostly by people who like getting wedgies.)  There were six flocks in all.  Despite Jesse's objections, we decided it would be better to make a run for the temple, rather than to fight all the swarms.  Of course, it wasn't that easy.  By the time we were halfway to the building, the flocks were all around us.

Note: The Ogre/Troll tokens represent bird swarms.

Calla and Kossack took a stand at the base of the temple steps, encouraging their teammates to run past them and get into the doors.  It was a very difficult battle without a magic user in the party.  Pixie's area spells would have been very helpful.  The birds didn't actually do a lot of damage, but they had a damaging aura and their pecks caused blindness.  We managed to kill a couple of the flocks, and severely incapacitated a couple of the others.  Once Malagar was inside, he stood in the doorway and used his daily power "Blinding Barrage", which helped out a lot.

Once we finally made it through the door, we closed it and rested a little.  Then we headed for the stairs and started checking out some of the empty areas on the map.

First we took a look at area A, which was just a trash room.  We set some of the trash on fire for the heck of it, but it was too damp to burn well.  We heard some rats rooting around, but we didn't bother them.  Then we headed over to hallway B, which turned out to be a ramp going down.  We'll check that out later, once we've seen all of this level.  Finally we headed to room C.

We had our stealthy, dark-seeing Drow tiptoe up and peek inside the room.  Six Ghouls.  We tried our best to arrange a decent surprise round, but we wasted a some of the early rounds with bad die rolls.  Joanna had the first kill, critting for an incredible amount of damage.

Krusk bravely ran into the room, wedging himself in the corner adjacent to three Ghouls, so that he could use Five Storms.  Unfortunately he only hit one of them.  On their turn, the first one paralyzed him, and the second one rolled a crit.  It did a massive amount of damage which brought him nearly unscathed, to lower than negative bloodied.  The monk died an honorable death.

Kossack also went down, and nearly died.  But after a little surgery by Sir Jerry (see what I did there?), Kossack was back on his hooves and continued to battle.  Joanna did a lot of damage on the final pair of enemies, making the most of area powers and crits.  In typical Drow fashion, Malagar was already looting the room's treasure chest before the battle was over.

We called it there for the night. I don't believe we've officially taken a short rest, so there's still the worry something else will come through the other doors.