The Brothers Stone: Part 1

It's time for a long overdue update.  I will not be posting the Halloween Horror as I had mentioned two months back (my memory is not what it once was) and will instead regale you all with a much more recent tale.

A friend, new to our gaming group and relatively new to RPGs altogether, owing up to an unfortunate derth of DMs this past weekend, decided he would run a 3.5 one-shot adventure for whomever showed up.  That ended up being myself and Paddy McRuleslawyer.  So, new friend, we'll call him Tokyo Joe, had his DM début to a small but extremely experienced group.

Paddy and I began by crafting brother Goliath Barbarians, myself wielding their signature Greathammer while Paddy chose Tokyo's favourite weapon; the Fullblade.  Both were large, of course.  After re-familiarising ourselves with 3.5's skillsets (gods, I do so love Pathfinder), Paddy and I chose complementary skills and began the adventure.

Tokyo informed us that we called a lonely mountain on a lonely, secluded island, home.  Our abode was also populated by various primordial creatures and the forests were described as something straight out of Jurassic Park.

Despite our impressive starting stats combined with the complete isolation from other races, Paddy and I were apparently the bottom of the food chain in our tribe.  When pressed for why, Tokyo told us he had rolled for it.  Ah, dice fiat beating out logic; a mistake I was once very guilty of (one day I'll tell that story, but not today).

So, in an effort to determine which of us was the less shitty one, our Brothers Stone were sent out into the forest to see who could bring back the biggest haul.  Despite my urgings, rookie DM chose to have us make Knowledge: Nature checks instead of  Survival checks.  Neither Paddy nor myself had chosen said skill, leading us to return home empty handed.  I quickly surmised that our characters were the worst hunters in our tribe because the laws of hunting applied differently in Tokyo's world than in any other I had ever played in.  *sigh*

The next day, we set out again in search of our trophies.  Another failed Nature check led to Perception Listen or Spot checks (our choice).  We both chose Listen and Paddy's roll revealed to him noises from down by the beach.  This being a competition, I decided to let him go his merry way and continue along our previous path all by my lonesome.  I realise that splitting the party was sort of a dick move to use against a fledgling DM but Tokyo Joe had me good and angry at this point.

We followed Paddy's perspective for awhile, leading him to the beach where our characters were revealed to have no knowledge of technology, despite having crafted our own weapons and armour out of steel.  Paddy saw a "big tree" floating on the water with several "little trees" running back and forth between it and the beach.

Switch back to my POV and, after several hours of failed Geography checks, I decided 'Fuck it' and headed back home.  Along the way I encountered six "tiny men made of metal".  After I finished explaining to the rookie that my character was indeed familiar with metal armour and that I did not in fact believe the little buggers were skinned in metal, I tried to talk to them.  It was then that we realised that, because our characters had grown up on Survivor Island, we only spoke Gol-Kah, the tongue of the Goliaths.  Reaching somewhat of a language barrier, the "tiny metal men" attacked me with a crossbow, another 'stunning' innovation of science that my weapons crafting character was unfamiliar with.

My character did something smart for once and linked the lack of fauna to the guys in armour.  Seeing that I was outnumbered 6 to 1, I used my superior speed to high-tail it back to our village to let them know what was up.

Switching to Paddy's character, he studied the goings-on of the invaders for quite some time before surprising a roving band of "tiny metal men" with his fullblade.  One confirmed crit later and the little bugger had a 41 point damage crease in his shiny metal "skin".  Sadly, that was not enough to topple the tiny bastard and, even though he scored 3rd on the initiative track, Paddy did not get to use his first round attack.  He was too busy dying.

Switch back to me.  I reach the village, hours later and having avoided several pit traps that our minuscule adversaries had dug into our mountain, winded and breathless. I head straight to the elders and inform them "tiny metal men" had attacked the island.  They laughed.  I try to explain that, as my stats verify, I'm a capable hunter.  They all laugh again.  It is at this point that I resign myself to switching my alignment from Chaotic Good to Spiteful Evil and head back to the place where I found my previous attackers in an attempt to sell my own people in slavery.

I make it back to where my brother had veered from our path hours earlier (at last, a Survival check!) and follow his trail down to the beach.  There, I was greeted by the same sight he was, only at night and far more in detail.  There were "tiny metal men" everywhere.  There were also several of the island's other inhabitants held in wooden cages.  I smiled.

So, I climbed a tree and hid myself in its branches, observing the goings on down below and waited for one to separate himself from the rest of the group.  I climbed down and politely allowed the little guy to shit in peace before confronting him.  I approached, arms up in the air non-threateningly, and tried to talk with him.  Our language barrier had not diminished since my prior encounter with these invaders. 

Still, this little fellow led me down onto the beach.  There, he ran off and brought up what I could only assume to be the leader of their invasion force.  After trying again to speak with the little fellow, I came to the realisation that there was sand on a beach.  I had the worlds biggest etch-a-sketch at my feet.

I began by drawing a rudimentary stick figure with a huge hammer on his back.  I pointed to it and then pointed to myself.  I repeated this process until the dwarf touched his right finger to his nose.  Taking this to be his people's non-verbal gesture of understanding, I continued.  I drew some trees.  I pointed to them, pointed to the drawing.  The hairy midget touched his nose once more.  I then drew a mountain.  I pointed to the mountain in the distance and back to my drawing.  Another nose touch.  I then drew a village with other stick figures in it.  I pointed to myself, then to the people.  A nose touch.  I pointed to the drawing, then to the mountain.  The dwarf smiled and touched his nose.  Then, I drew a cage around the village.

With a smile as large as he was small, the dwarf touched his nose at my Benedict drawing.  I then drew a representation of the dwarf beside the one of myself.  I pointed to it and then pointed to the bearded gentleman before me.  He touched his nose.  I proceeded to draw an arrow to the village drawing and followed that by drawing myself and the dwarf again, but this time we were attacking the villagers.  He shook his head and did not touch his nose.  My heart fell.

I was distraught as to what to do.  The spite-portion of my black heart was crushed that I would not join our attackers in decimating the assholes who kept me down and mocked my (now obviously) correct assessment of the situation.  Then, I settled for escape.  I locked eyes with my partner in discourse and pointed to myself, then to the boat "big floating tree".  The dwarf touched his nose, then pointed to myself, a cage and a boat.

Realising that the undergrown boar wanted to capture me, I shook my head vigorously.  I then repeated my previous gesture of pointing to myself then the ship "big tree" and nodding.  The dwarf touched his nose again before repeating his previous gestures; me, cage, tree.  I emphatically shook my head.  Eventually, the idea that I may be a bit of a difficult capture, especially considering I was willing to join them, sunk into his thick skull and he went off in search of whomever his boss was.

After an eternity of uneasy glances between myself and the Lollipop Guild, my translator returned and led me to a "small floating tree" headed towards the larger one.  Once aboard, I was taken to an area of the ship which had obviously been very hastily renovated for a gentleman of my stature.  He left me and I slept.

Upon awakening, I strapped my hammer to my back once more and joined the crew on the beach.  After hours of lifting cages to and fro, I finally joined a gang that was taking the captured creatures belowdeck.  As I entered the hold, I was confronted with the site of my brother, Paddy's character, in a cage, devoid of equipment and clothing.  Our exchange went something like this.

"What the hell?" I asked, curiously.

"You what the hell!"

"What are you doing down here?"  I indicated the hold with all of the non-sentient creatures around us.

"They," Paddy said, indicating the dwarves now shifting nervously around me, "attacked me and knocked me out.  I haven't eaten for a day and I've been sleeping in my own shit!"

"Huh.  They gave me a room."  I savoured his icy glare before sighing.  "I'll see what I can do."

Intermission

The first Thorsday of December has come and gone and I still don't have a hilarious post up.  Sadly, that will not change today. 

I was about halfway through a new retelling of past hijinks when Paizo's sixth annual RPG Superstar competition rolled around.  Myself and a number of my group have discussed making an entry in the past but one of them challenged me to actually enter this year and so I have been busy working on that.  I would love to describe what my entry is but this year there have been a few changes; all entries must be anonymous.  If I even hint in a public forum what my item is, I am immediately disqualified.  As I have a (perhaps inflated) high opinion of myself and my talents, I think I have a decent shot of getting past the first round.  That being the case, I have no desire to get DQ'd in search of a few extra votes.

So, barring any further shenanigans, I will be returning to my regular pace next week with the first instalment of the Halloween Horror!

It Ends! The Undermountains of Madness: Part VI

Following the 'dwarves' information, we unwittingly walked towards our doom.  The path came to a T-junction with both paths going 10' before becoming a room.  We chose left, naturally, and took two steps into the room before Jimbo called for initiative.

Our characters all failed our knowledge checks (a running theme that game), but from Jimbo's scripted description we players knew that we faced a Deepspawn, a foul beast that can birth copies of any race that it has devoured.  That explained the off-dwarves and the poor drow.  It also explained the psuedo-Grimlocks that stood in the room with it.

Combat was fast and fierce, but within four rounds we had another issue.  The room back to the right was spawning new horrors; more undead.  The hallways being only 5' wide (all the better to be defended by dwarves, my dear!), I rushed to the other end and stood stalwart in the doorway.

Brainburn, Paddy, and Gobbler faced the aberration and its children while I fought a cadre of modified skeletons.  Once my turn attempts had run out, I fought with mace and shield.  It took me several rounds but my Cleric eventually cleared out the entire room on his own (a feat usually reserved for Paddy's characters) and returned to my comrades in arms.

I returned to find the Deepspawn and her brood dead.  I also found Paddy's Soulknife locked in mortal combat with Gobbler's Ghoul.  Brainburn did what little he could to aid his brother from another undead mother.

During the fight, Gobbler had rolled poorly and had taken a chunk out of Paddy whilst the mindblade wielder held the mamma in a multi-headlock.  He had taken it poorly.  Once their mutual foe had been vanquished, Paddy turned on the Ghoul.  As Paddy had been Brainburn's initial captor (plus the fact that, in-game, Paddy had been a dick to the flameskull, much moreso than the rest of us), the flaming head had chosen Gobbler's side.

I arrived just in time to see Paddy get the killing blow on Gobbler.  Sighing in frustration, I teleported the three survivors back to the Kingdom for some healing before we broke for the evening.  Having received enough XP to take us to 4, my cleric was ready and rearing to go when the next game session came around a week later. Gobbler was prepared with character number five in hand although Paddy's Soulknife was nowhere in sight.  He had lost the character sheet. 

"Fuck it," he said.  "Creating a new character from scratch is easier."  I found myself running the last starting character alive as Paddy rolled up an Elven Wizard to join Brainburn and I, along with Gobbler's Nixie.  Also, in a rare treat, my brother had joined us for that campaign.

Now, my brother (three years my younger) had gamed with us in the past.  I am quite certain that, at some point, I will cover the games where he was DMing.  He had been a good player but at that junction in life, he had decided that women were more interesting than his brother and friends.  He is thusly dubbed DB Skirtchaser for this blog's purposes.  I'll leave the 'DB' to my readers' fecund imagination.

Adding his Dwarven Barbarian to our greatly bolstered ranks, Skirtchaser joined us as meatshield.  Using my ring of brokeness, I took us instantly back to the room of doom and looted the corpse of Paddy's last character (which he rattled most of the items and money off of by memory) and the re-corpse of the Ghoul.  We also took what few goodies our enemies had possessed. 

Taking the goods to the Kingdom's treasurer to unload our riches (quite a bit, considering how much Paddy carrier on him), we split the enemies' loot evenly but only Brainburn and I got to reap the rewards of party death (that group charter was a brilliant idea).  Brainburn, being nothing more than a flying head, had little to spend his money on that would actually be beneficial, which saddened Jimbo greatly.  Gobbler threw out the idea that we could carve out a hole in his skull and screw in a metamagic rod or two.

Once the laughing had subsided, our flying friendly flame specialist was sprouting a rod of lesser maximize from his forehead.  He had spent extra money to have it designed to appear like a natural boney horn.  The human unicorn, or the flaming humicorn as he was quickly dubbed, was quite proud of his newest extremity.  Having very little to spend my money on, I decided to keep it for 'later'.  Little did I know that later would never come.

We continued our dungeon trudge, fighting random encounters the further we went into the complex that momma Deepspawn had her children carving out.  The only real thing of note that happened that day was the ridiculous amount of time DB Skirtchaser spent texting his girlfriend.  When we broke for food, he left.  Honestly, I think I spent more time describing him here than he spent at the gaming table that day.  Sheesh, some people have their priorities all wrong (says the guy with a date this weekend!).

Returning from food netted us one final encounter against some Grell.  What they were doing in my Kingdom, I have no idea.  We were determined to find out, though.

Initiative was rolled and Paddy, saddened that his own grapple monster was no more, opted instead to blast the beaked bastards with a fireball.  The now-crispy critters went next, grappling Paddy (who was at that precise moment quite displeased with his decision to not remake his Soulknife), Gobbler and myself.  Brainburn, despite his huge penalties, managed to evade the fourth Grell grapple.

I cast Body Blades, a spell I had prepared for just such an eventuality, and was promptly free.  Gobbler attacked as best he could but his Nixie, like the majority of his characters that campaign, failed to be useful.  Going last, the flaming humicorn used his eye-beams of fiery pain to kill the creature holding fast to his spellcasting brethren.  Paddy thanked him before casting a round of magic missiles into the Grell nearest Brainburn once initiative rolled over.  Then the Grells went.  Then Gobbler's Nixie died.

To say that Gobbler was angry would be an understatement as large as the man himself.  I recall dice being lobbed while the rest of us died of laughter.  Once he was calm, he began working on his sixth character for the campaign in about as many sessions while the rest of us avenged his Nixie's death.  We mopped them up quickly, thanks in great part to a second helping of fireball, this time from a more frequent source than Paddy.  Grells dispatched, we travelled to the third level in Undermountain, claiming all we saw in the name of Kingdom.

A few random encounters later, we came to a great pit, easily thousands of feet deep. We returned back home for some further loot selling and the feeding of the Western Watch.  There, Jimbo informed me of the sad story of Dwarf claiming his direct ancestors had once ruled Undermountain.  Sensing a challenge to my claim, we immediately went out to check the validity of these claims (and silence them, if necessary).

We needn't have worried.  His name was Gyud, a fighter of little prominence.  His haggard appearance calmed my anxiety.  He had been haunted by dreams of late about a plain crown with a bloodred gem attached, laying at the bottom of a great chasm.  He wasn't interested in ruling anything but rather felt a familial obligation to not let the thing fall into the clutches of evil.

The threat to the throne thwarted, we took off in search of my new crown.  Gyud was good enough to inform us that it was at the bottom of Belkram's Fall.  His description matched that of the giant chasm we had encountered on our last excursion into level 3.  I returned us there post-haste and we looked down.  I scouted out below but it was designed in such a way that I could not pick out any location well enough to safely teleport us there.

Returning briefly to the Kingdom for some epic climbing gear and back again to the Fall, we were met with sounds from above us.  Gobbler had his sixth character ready.

A halfling Ninja came hurtling at us from the darkness above.  Before we could recover our wits, initiative was rolled and we found ourselves facing Gobbler's pursuers.  The poor bastards were not even memorable enough for me to recall their race! 

Introductions were made off-camera and we began our final descent.  Another bout of unremarkable travel had us eventually reaching Skullport.  We were not as ill-received as I expected.  Paddy wanted to take over the joint but cooler heads prevailed.  After all, as the flaming humicorn informed us, all the flaming skulls without additional appendages functioned as a hivemind.  Jimbo politely informed us that the entire Kingdom trebled could not make a scratch against the forces of Skullport.  Humbled, we gathered what information we needed from the dealers of such things and exited the town.

We travelled further upon our road and faced some more Grell, adults this time, but that was where the campaign ended.  Looking back, I don't know whether to celebrate or cry that things never progressed further.  Hel, I don't even remember why we didn't continue.  I think that things had gotten too out of hand, what with Gobbler's revolving door of characters becoming increasingly more fantastical than the last and all.  Still, I have fond memories of this module and one day hope to take part in that adventure again.  Maybe with Pathfinder rules.  And maybe with a cartographer in tow!

The Undermountains of Madness: Part V

I have been informed by Jimbo Baggins that my recollection of the events in Undermountain are not entirely accurate, to which I respond, "this is my lie and I'll tell it how I like!" That settled, let me continue my fable.

Okay, so, where were we?  Ah, the ring.  Well, we quickly determined that the ring only worked in the environs of Undermountain.  My attempt to teleport into a brothel from 'back home' having failed, we instead returned to the landing above the magical resetting cave-in.  Specifics help in our group.  We were greeted by a 'woman' of great power.  I use the term loosely because what we really encountered was another living spell.  This one used to be one of Halaster the Mad's (a mage of great renown, for those of you unfamiliar with the Forgotten Realms campaign setting) apprentices.  She confirmed that our visions (the things that brought the original party together.  Remember those?  No?  Me neither.) were indeed of that crazy caster.  He had blown himself up and some portion of Undermountain.  Anyhoo, she was impressed by our antics thus far and wanted to give us a token of her appreciation.  She left and later came back with an intelligent sword.  We thanked her and bamfed away.

Clueless as to what to do with the blade, we decided on selling it.  No use in keeping a 50k+ gp item that no one has a use for, right?  Right.  I don't recall the exact sum we received but damn, did we get rich(er) quick!  I was decked out with a +2 mace and a +3 armour and shield before hitting level 4.

This was also about the point where Gobbler lost his character sheet between sessions.  Seeing just how ineffective his character had been, we opted to retire him to the kingdom (in case we reached sufficiently high enough levels to make him as awesome as Gobbler had planned originally), where he was one of our top 'wizards'.  Thinking long and hard, Gobbler had not been satisfied with waiting until level 20 to become an undead.  So, he picked up the Libris Mortis and made a Ghoul.  Since we had already built up a good relation with Brainburn, Paddy and I said what the Hel and rolled with it.  This would have hilarious ramifications later.

Roleplaying meeting Gobbler's new character went something like this:

Random NPC: "Sir, we have received a report from our western outpost (Squeemish the Mimic, who was constantly fed a diet of our enemies) that there has been a creature skulking about lately."

Paddy: "Let's go 'investigate' (our euphemism for kill everything we find).

Me: "Agreed.  No incursion to my territory will stand!"

*Teleports group to western outpost*

Me: "Squeemish, what have you seen?"

Squeemish: "Dead thingz hauntz the corridoorz."

Brainburn: "Like me?"

Squeemish: "More grey, less flamez."

*Searching ensues, carefully avoiding the nearby statue of whirlwindy, stabbity death*

*A wild Ghoul appears!*

Gobbler: "Don't taze me bro!  I won't eat your people.  I'll just gnaw upon your enemies."

Group: "Welcome aboard!"

The new character settled in, we teleported back to the kingdom and plotted our next move.  We decided "see what is beyond the room of rubble-rumble" was our best course of action.

'porting back, just past the stairs, we continued on our quest.  Several uneventful rooms later, we found another empty storeroom.  This time, however, Jimbo called for me to make a Spot check.  I had few skill ranks as a Cleric, but I did have high wisdom.  A natural twenty combined with a 20 Wis netted me a 25 result, just good enough to spot the door hidden in the stone.  It opened up into a hallway which descended into massive chamber 80' high.  Cobwebs were everywhere but I detected no evil.  Dwarven runes marked the room as the Hall of the Black Helm, which sadly meant nothing to either me or my character.  Ranks in Knowledge: Local were needed if I was to be a competent king.

Searching the room, we found a simple stone chair (large but not quite a throne) with a dented black helm and battered bastard sword. Seeing how the room had obtained its name (and detecting no magic in the items) we continued our search. Scrawled on the walls in several different languages were directions on how to get to a nearby merchant encampment. Despite the layers of dust and obvious passage of time elsewhere in the room, the chalk messages were recent.

Having nothing better to do, we followed the directions and headed towards the camp. Along the way, we were greeted by messages such as “the merchants are heavily armed” and “announce yourself loudly if you don't want your riches to line merchant pockets”. We laughed heartily at the last one.  Still, precaution is rarely bad in the RPG world.

Calling out obscenities (loudly!) as we arrived, we were immediately greeted by a 'dwarf' introducing himself as Barundar.  He was dressed elegantly; a special item of note was his glorious black cloak.  Something about the way he kept his beard put me off.  I got the vibe that, whatever else he might be, he certainly wasn't a dwarf.  I quietly informed the party but never outright called the merchant out on it, mostly because he was not alone.

There were three human mercenaries in the faux-dwarf's employ.  They were sparsely equipped for guards so far beneath the surface, despite what the written warnings had advised us of.  That, coupled with the odd feeling about the merchant himself, told me things were very wrong there.  I had no desire to find out how wrong.  Sadly, as in life, I rarely get what I want.

As we were discussing how exactly this merchant was trafficking goods through my kingdom without our knowledge, his cape came to life and began attacking us.  Apparently, the cloth was actually a cloaker and he was rather wroth at our mention of carving our kingdom's riches out of the cave his people once called home.

The merchant and his sellswords revealed themselves as doppelgängers and the fight was on.  That was a particularly gruelling fight, however even superior numbers could not secure victory for our shapeshifting foes and soon I had a fancy new cloak!

We looted the caravan in short order, and by that I mean we tied the wagon across my dwarf's broad shoulders and began the long trip back to the Kingdom, and by that I mean I teleported the whole group back to the predesignated "don't stand in the circle upon penalty of death" area that we had installed recently.  The loot netted us another 15,000 or so golden lions and went towards more kingdomy things.

Profiteering done for the nonce, we blinked and were back in the merchant cave.  We double checked everything, making certain we had missed nothing.  Satisfied, we backtracked our steps into Black Helm Hall.

After a bit of uninteresting travel, we came to a junction.  We had a door on our immediate right and a door down a ways on our left.  Obviously, we went left.  Upon reaching the door, we saw more chalk-messages on the wall.  They said not to attack the statues within and to stay out of the light.  Already having had bad experiences with waking statues, I considered this good advice.  Upon entering, Brainburn informed us that we had entered an area of dead magic.  I argued with Jimbo that, as a caster myself, I should have been aware of the zone.  Once he had showed me that the description specified arcane casters I grumbled about poorly written modules but otherwise shut my mouth.

The room had obviously once been magnificent but some recent disaster had befallen it.  The eastern half of the room was buried under a rockslide.  There was a circle of light in the far east, around which five armoured figures stood silent vigil.  Seeing nothing inside of said light, we decided investigating the other door was a good idea.

Said door led to a room of floating pillars.  There were four of them, each depicting a different race of immense power.  They could be spun on their axis with ease but moving them either horizontally or vertically proved impossible.  With a shrug, we moved on.  One door and two paths led out of the room.  We chose left, which happened to be the door.  We did not travel far, as the room ended in rubble.  Jimbo called for a Knowledge: Dungeoneering check and I was soon telling the other characters about how, despite looking dwarven to the untrained eye, the craftsman ship was quite inferior.

That titbit delivered, we went back to pillar room and took the next left.   This led to another massive chamber that distinguished itself by having two massive carvings of nude women in the distant south end of the room.  It was also incredibly dim, but the groups collective darkvision (Paddy's obtain via Goggles of Night) was unaffected.

We took the first left out of there and found ourselves upon a quartet of sleeping Drow.  We sent in the members of the party who could sneak easily (i.e. everyone but me) and the four dark elves were easily dispatched.  Searching them, we discovered something amiss.  They were not bedecked in the normal Drow custom.  Their clothing was rumpled and dirty and not at all spectacular.  With little in the way of loot, I teleported their remains to the western outpost, who was delighted.  Returning to the group, we continued exploring.

Various lefts later, we came across three 'dwarves', who unsettled me for different reasons but the same underlying reason as the doppelgänger had; they just didn't seem right.

Attempting to speak to them in the tongue of Delzoun yielded no results, although Jimbo told us that they seemed like they were trying really hard to understand.  We switched to common and called out our greetings.  When that failed, we switched first to terran, then to undercommon.  The last gave us results, to an extent anyway.

I pressed them for information about their clan and was rewarded with "they live to the south".  No further details were forthcoming.  They couldn't seem to remember their clan names, nor their own names for that matter.  When frustration set it, Paddy's Soulknife did the talking.

He asked them for information about what they were doing, receiving a "cleaning out the room" for his trouble.  He then switched tactics and asked them if they could provide any information.  They told us that there were creatures "like him" as they pointed first to Brainburn, then to Gobbler's Ghoul.  Warning us to steer clear of them, the 'dwarves' went back to work.  We shrugged and moved towards the direction they had indicated the undead could be found.  Why do we rarely listen to good advice?

The Undermountains of Madness: Part IV

Holy Steam filled the incredibly short hallway.  If the rust monster had not been punishment enough, Jimbo had another rockslide blocking off the rest of the passage just beyond the rust monster.  When pressed on how it had survived so long in the cave in, our DM just glared at us and began flipping through the monster manual.  We ceased pleading our case and the book was put down.

Back to the blessed vapor.  It was causing our undead companion serious damage.  He fled back down the corridor the way we had come and, now another man short, we did the same.

After a food break, we returned to my blossoming kingdom and chilled for a little while, safe in the knowledge that little could get to us that we did not allow.  A few in-game months passed and the kingdom of 50 was ten times that.  It is amazing what money can buy.

Speaking of, we were all filthy rich.  10 barrels of oil per day at 316 silver per barrel (or, more accurately, 5 copper per pint and 8 pints to the gallon with 79 gallons in a barrel) gave us 316 golden lions a day.  Free.  For eternity.  Even factoring out the cost of purchasing barrels and transportation, we still netted over 290gp a day.  Not a lot for a kingdom, I grant, but enough to cover all the tools necessary to expand our operations. 

Jimbo, perhaps feeling bad over his Rust Monster bullshitery, ruled that the cloaker chasm had nice, deep veins of a multitude of ores, including adamantine.  Things were looking our way.

Once Gobbler had made his new character, a Dwarven True Necromancer, we set out once more.  Making our way back to the corpse of Gobbler's third character, we buried him in a cairn and continued onwards.

We had some minor skirmishes along the way; obviously nothing noteworthy as I cannot recall them.  Eventually, we came across a medium sized cavern.  Eagerly, we entered.

There was an exit hallway and a row of rungs leading into a crawlspace on the wall opposite us. We marched towards the ladder but we were attacked from above by a set of tentacles. I was grappled and initiative was rolled.

Winning initiative, as Paddy's characters usually do, the Soulknife joined me in grappling the beast. No one was going to grapple anything but him, or so he said. With my aid, the roles were reversed. The choker went next, struggling vainly to break free from Paddy's iron grip. Also, there were some noises from the crawlspace beside us.

Gobbler was next, doing what he could to aid our situation, followed by Brainburn. The flameskull moved to investigate the darkened hole above us from where the noises were coming.  His shrieks alerted us to his situation; he had been grappled.  Again.

The turns rolled back around and Paddy proceeded to establish 'pin', and by that I mean he yanked the choker off of the ceiling and brought it crashing down at our feet.  Seeing he had things well in hand, I moved to aid Brainburn, who disappeared into the darkness.  The creature facing Paddy tried vainly to free himself.  Gobbler's Necromancer summoned some undead monstrosity in the hole above us.  Sadly, it was not long for this world. 

Jets of flame spurted out of the narrow opening overhead followed quickly by Brainburn himself.  Apparently, the little devil cast his once daily Fireball and his captor had not approved.

Back to the top again, the Soulknife began truly proving dominance to his foe by slamming him up against the stone ceiling and then forcing him to the ground.  Repeatedly.  The rest of us stood around and watched after that, seeing as how the other beast wasn't coming after us any time soon.  The show went on for a few rounds until finally the poor bastard moved no more.  A choked sob came from the crawlspace and we turned in time to catch a glimpse of our second attacker fleeing back into the hole. 

"No one escapes on my watch!"  With that, Paddy went in.  Gobbler, Jimbo and I nearly fell over laughing when Paddy announced his intention to drag the other creature back out and repeat the process over again.  We could hear the cries of terror from the second victim as the Soulknife drug it back out into the main cavern.  Recalling Chokers are semi-intelligent, and seeing as it was already half Kentucky-fried, I had a better idea.

I informed the group of my intention to interrogate our prisoner, to which Gobbler pointed out that we had no rope.  I was about to remind him that I was filthy rich in equipment when Paddy had a better idea.

"Tie it up with the other one."  The horror on Jimbo's face was priceless.

"With its dead mate?"

"Yup."  And thusly we traumatised the dungeon denizen to the point where its struggles ceased and offered no resistance as we returned to the kingdom.

To get reliable information, we needed a Zone of Truth spell, which was not on my list at the time. Deciding that our POW would likely find some way to commit suicide in order to end its horror, we knew that waiting for daybreak was a bad idea. I searched my kingdom for another level three cleric but, according to Jimbo, there were none to be found. Fine; the city above us would house one. It was Waterdeep, after all.

Returning to the City of Splendors sans the Iron Giant but with Brainburn (whose loyalty had actually been earned by that point) netted us even more cash from the then blubbering guards of the entrance. One of the two did not have enough to cover his loss and was threatened with an old fashioned Dwarven kneecapping. He had the cash ready for our return trip.

We sought out a priest of the Dwarven faith. Faced with the percentage of Dwarves in Waterdeep, Jimbo ruled that there was one, a Cleric of Morrodin. I tithed a great deal and tried to pry my fellow Cleric away from Waterdeep and into my kingdom. After a successful diplomacy check and some heavy roleplaying, he agreed.

Once back in the kingdom (which we never did name), we led our newest subject to the cathedral. There, we had the traumatised Choker under suicide watch. After gathering what supplies the priest needed, we sat back and waited for the magic. Spell in place, the questioning began.

It was slow going, but when Gobbler zombified her deceased mate and made him dance an Irish jig, all while still holding onto the poor woman, she snapped and told us everything. Not far from their cave was a deep well with a secret inside of it. Beyond that, she knew little. Her information was hardly worth all the effort but we were all incredibly proud of ourselves all the same. When asked for a quick release from death, we declined. Who knew what other 'valuable' information she may have.

I wold like to blame Brainburn's influence for our characters' less-than-wholesome actions, but that would be dishonest.

We set off again after a few days rest in search for the vaunted well. We got there and I could hear the Choker chuckling in the back of my head. We couldn't see the bottom of the well because there were webs obscuring the view. The whole thing, covered in webs. Before superskull could melt the webs away with his heat vision, a fiendish spider crawled out of the well.

The evil arachnid proved little test for us, as we dispatched it in a round. Before we could celebrate, however, another one came at us. This repeated itself for several turns before we realised that something else was amiss. Braving the webs, I leapt into the well. I took a low outcome from 3d6 falling damaged and landed next to a squishy thing. It shat a spider in response.

“An ooze” I shouted, getting Paddy to run down the walls and Brainburn to float down to aid me. Gobbler stayed fairly useless. A decent fight took place, what with the acid damage slam attacks that our massless enemy employed and the spider-per-round special ability that provoked no attacks of opportunity.

“Everybody out,” Jimbo via Brainburn shouted out to us. Paddy carried me back to the top via his run on walls ability and a second once-daily Fireball came blooming out behind us like a mushroom cloud. Sadly, this did next to nothing due to the spiders having the fiendish trait and the ooze being completely immune to fire damage.

Eventually we killed all the spiders and no more came out. I healed the party and back down into the well we went to go mano-a-mano against the summoning ooze. A few near death experiences later and we crawled triumphantly out of the well with our treasure, a few +1 arrows and a feather token for a swan boat. We had learned nothing from our previous experience with information obtained via torture. That Choker would pay.

On our way back we decided to investigate a rumbling noise that we retroactively had been hearing for the majority of the campaign. We found ourselves looking up into an ongoing stairwell. Moving up into it against my protestations, my fears were proven valid when the walls came down around us. All of us reflexed out and only took half of 3d6 damage as rubble blocked the way up. We stood at the base arguing over whose fault the entire debacle was when the traps magically reset itself and the rumbling began again. We could see up the stairwell again. Rationalising that treasure would be at the top (because if years of gaming has taught me anything, its that the most dangerous traps lead to the best treasure) we charged up the stairs. We narrowly made it up safely, beating the magically crumbling staircase by a hair's breadth.

We quickly found ourselves trapped between a landslide and two flaming spheres. Where they came from and why we couldn't see their glow before rushing up is beyond me. Oddly enough, as Brainburn's eye lasers quickly proved, the orbs of fire were not immune to fire damage. Thinking it was another case of Jimbo misreading things. He forked over the book long enough to show us that they did, indeed, take fire damage.

Flabbergasted, we quickly made short work of the orbs, thanks mostly to Brainburn. The path clear, we moved up to the 'top' of the stairwell. A glowing wall of arcane energy blocked our path. Recognising it as part of the dream that unified the original characters, of whom half were then dead, I stuck my hand into it. After detecting evil, of course.

Finding none, I reached in and pulled out a ring. The ring, which had tiny horns on it, would allow its wielder to employ Greater Teleport at will. If I have to explain to you how bad an idea it is to gift this to a level 3 party, you probably shouldn't be reading this (but please keep doing it; any ego stroking is welcome!). Given a power greater than I could really comprehend, and being in great need of health after dealing with two cave ins atop us and two flaming spheres, I took us back to the kingdom for some much needed R&R.

It Continues... Again! Part III

Descending again into the source of our riches, we began hunting down the so-called goblin king who had set up shop in my Dwarven ancestors' home.  Following the directions of our fourth NPC caster, we eventually wound up in front of a sturdy, finely made wooden door.  The front of our battering ram somewhat marred the beauty of the craftsmanship as we smashed the door down.

Unsurprisingly, a platoon of goblins stood ready before us.  They had the numbers, 23 to 4.  The green rodents never stood a chance.  When at last their 'king' lay before my feet, groveling for his life and spilling the details on every choice bit of loot he had hidden away, I gleefully took my axe and took a good 7" off of his height.

We set about the task of testing the sniveling monarch's information, which the group informed me should have been done before taking his head from him.  Still, I couldn't have stood his warty verdant visage any longer anyhow.  Turns out, information obtained via means of torture is incredibly unreliable.  Who knew?

Taking a 20 on search really helped, and by helped and mean yielded fuck-all for results.  Eventually, we came to the conclusion that the closest things to riches were what little wealth the little bastards had on them, though their arms and armour were masterwork.  It was a shame that, as a house rule, all non-magical items found out in the world were only worth half their retail price.  23 sets of that, even at half price, was a nice chunk of change for level 2 characters.

Loading ourselves down and quickly realised that having an NPC who couldn't carry anything was just as bad as not having one.  The only real upside was that, since Brainburn was our captive, he did not yet qualify for keeping any of our easily earned gains himself.  I guess it was a good thing that I was Dwarf and that they are the best pack mules money doesn't buy.

Our return trip to the 'elevator' was uneventful.  Pulling the rope, we began ascending.  Almost halfway up, our ride came to a painful halt.  The metal disc that served as our 'elevator' base angled heavily to the right and the Gobbler went tumbling back to the ground.  6d6 of falling damage later and our rotund friend was rendered unconscious and dying.  I barely managed to scrabble to the edge and hang on for dear life.  Paddy's Soulknife had the ability to run on walls for a short distance and he safely go to the cavern floor below.  I yelled for all I was worth and screamed for the guards to lower us back down slowly.

Once I was on the floor, I found Brainburn flying on his leash, defending Gobbler's downed body like a madman.  I think that it was selfpreservation as opposed to loyalty that drove the flameskull's actions, but the end result was still good.  His eyebeams of doom were rather effective against our slug-like foe.

I tried to run towards Jabba but found that to be an impossible proposition.  I took two steps and found myself rooted to the floor.  Apparently, Jabba had learned some tricks from the master of magnetism and was controlling metal.  Since I was wearing full plate (a feature that my Pathfinder Clerics mourn the loss of), that meant that I was incapable of moving, leaving our flying companion and Paddy to fight Magneto alone.

They made a decent accounting of themselves until Sluggo threw a tantrum and had all those masterwork items taken from the goblin 'treasury' flying about us as deadly projectiles.  Just then, a brilliant idea hit me.  I had Soften Earth and Stone prepared as my domain spell.

Barely passing my concentration check (casting when your metal gauntlets make somatic components near impossible is a bitch!), I turned a 20 foot square of cavern just above the Metalmaster into clay, causing a nicely sized clayfall to crash into the greasy slug.  The 2d6 damage wasn't too terribly harmful to it, but the Hutt's lungs' inability to process clay did cause it to start suffocating.  A few rounds later and I was no longer crushed to the floor like a cockroach under a boot.

Regathering our things, as well as all the metal treasures out of the room that our foe slithered out of, we mounted the 'elevator' once more and again pulled the rope.  This time, the trip was uneventful.  We broke even with our guard pals on the "who will survive" bets and went about selling our newest phaty lootz.  Also leveling, as Magnus-lite was apparently a CR7 encounter due to the nature of the terrain and allowing for the fact we were loaded to the teeth with metal objects.

Deciding to rest for a while aboveground, we put our riches to good use, whoring and drinking our way into oblivion.  Brainburn was also a hit with the ladies, strangely enough.  Weeks passed by in a drunken haze until my Dwarven clanmates arrived, ready to build an oil empire below Waterdeep.  Funds marginally depleted, we agreed to go back down.  That, and I was really anxious to become a king...

Anyhoo, the four of us and a cadre of Dwarves carrying all the mining gear and oak casks we could afford, found ourselves before the guards, unable to pay their price.  Thankfully, wiser heads prevailed and they lowered us down.  The prospect of facing 50 angry bearded midgets did not sit well with them, apparently.

I led my clan towards the oil river, which was back to full capacity, as expected.  We boarded our canoes and paddled across.  The Jotunbrood Soulknife just waded through.  Being under five feet had its disadvantages.  Reaching the other side, I took them to the cathedral.  Mi familia began setting up camp and expanding the place in the way that only Dwarves can.  Hel, even the mummy got into helping.  Kinship doesn't end for the stout folk, even in death.

My kingdom's base of operations secure, Paddy, Gobbler (and by extension, Brainburn) and I continued scouring deeper into Undermountain.  According to the mummy (a good fellow for a cursed chap going by the apropos name of Thorvald Ragbeard), the section we were claiming had been sealed off from the main kingdom centuries ago.  All the traveling we had done?  A drop in the bucket of the totality of the Underhalls of Melairbode, the ancient Dwarven kingdom that had since been conquered by all sorts of creatures and was now essentially vacant.  Well, vacant like the Mines of Moira, anyway.

Setting off, I took the time to make certain that my kin knew that 10 barrels was our educated guess as to how much we could take and still have our river of fortune full the next day.  We took off in the direction Ragbeard suggested.  After a few uneventful hours, we came across a room that was riddled with tiny holes.  Fearing the cause of the swiss cheese at our feet, I detected evil.  Before I could shout out beholders-your-uncle, hundreds of the little eyestalked bastards swarmed over us.  Beholderkin swarm, we were told, and initiative was rolled.

The fight was easier than it should have been due to Brainburn's 1/day fireball.  Swarms never hold up well to radius spells.  Sadly, they had no treasure, or if they did, we had no reliable way of getting to it.  Looking back, I suppose that I could have molded the earth into clay shapes until we got to the bottom, but hindsight is 20/20.

Moving on, we encountered the Wailing Face; it was a major pain in the ass.  It was just a giant demonic face.  One that dealt sonic damage.  Lots of it, starting 50' out.  This fucking thing, we had no way to shut it off and it was the only way forward.  We were third level and, even as a hardy character with a high Con score, I only had 36hp, and that was the highest in the group (Paddy, in a rare showing, did not have a great Con for his PC).

Lacking a way to move forward, we picked Brainburn's, uh, brain for information on which way to go.  He told us of a hidden passage not far from there that would get us bye.  It led us to a room with two exits, one of which was a magical portal to an area a few miles outside of Waterdeep.  This would prove the easiest and most reliable way to transport my kingdom's oil into the city.

After walking back into Waterdeep and meeting our friendly neighborhood guards (who were dumbfounded as to how we had gotten back aboveground), we placed our bets on who would make it back up again next.  The guards again bet as they did last time.  Something in them could not get behind the survivability of a skull on a leash.

Backtracking to my makeshift kingdom, I told my clan of the teleporter and informed them to start building a defensible keep atop the portal's exit point.  Also, we needed more Dwarves if this was going to be a proper kingdom.  We put out the call to Dwarves that were not of our clan.  Also to anyone looking for a better life.  If they could follow our laws, they would be accepted.  It may not have resulted in the people best suited for the job, but it did get results.

Waiting to see what those results would be, we ventured forth once more.  Bypassing the screaming demon, we took the exit that didn't shunt us into a forest.  After a bit of travel we came across a fork off of the path blocked by rubble.  Wanting to know what was on the other side, we began clearing rocks.  Our DM that campaign, Jimbo Baggins, was (as has been mentioned before) lazy.  The Undermountain module didn't cover what was on the other side and he had no intention of making something up.  He informed us of this; we kept digging.  He said that our actions would end poorly for us; we kept digging.  Breaking through, he made good on his threat.

By DM fiat, we now faced a Rust Monster.  We all failed our appropriate knowledge checks miserably (with Brainburn failing by fiat), and thus had no idea of the threat we faced.

Much to Jimbo's disappointment, we defeated out foe without taking any hits from the creature.  Except Paddy, who wore no metal and created his own blade with the power of his mind.  Afterwards though, Jimbo got his wish.

Our group has the occasional misfortune of roleplaying ourselves to death.  This happens frequently and in hillarious ways.  Case in point:

Gobbler was a Gnome.  Said psuedo-fey are curious by nature.  Drawn to the odd coloration of the beast, the man in the iron suit reached out and touched the creature before us.  As soon as the armour had rusted off of the startled Gnome, Gobbler committed ritualistic seppuku before our stunned eyes.  The only thing more shocking than the loss of our comrade was the little Germling that came rolling out on an exorcise wheel.  According to Gobbler, the little creature was a familiar (the Steamcraft class comes with a familiar?) whose mighty efforts powered his suit.  The Gnome's dying words were to take care of his dearest friend.  Then Brainburn's screams began.

It Continues! Part II

Where was I?  Ah, yes, the guards.  They dutifully lowered us back down to the floor below, but only after we paid them yet again.  It would be the last time our coin lined their pockets.

Reaching the floor, we informed the two new characters of the dangers ahead.  Yes, their players already knew of the four-armed cyclone of steel, but we do roleplay from time to time.

Rushing past the danger zone, we returned to the chasm.  Danger averted, we used two rope ladders, one on either side, to navigate the cavern.  To get the one on the far side set up, we used a rope-ladder of climbing.  Riches really do spoil PCs.  Upon climbing the up the far side, we made it a whole minute before encountering the site of our next would-be peril.

A river stood before us of indeterminate depth.  Also, the damn thing was oil.  I don't mean 'covered in oil', I mean there was a goldmine in Texas Tea lapping softly at our feet.  Knowing this was too good to be true, I cast Detect Evil in the general vicinity of the black flow.  To no one's surprise, I detected it.  Concentrating long enough, I knew that we faced the bony clutches of the undead.  What did we do?  We put a rag on the end of our ten foot pole (I did say that we were rich, yes?) and lit the damn thing on fire.

After roasting marshmallows and cloakers for four days, the river and her concealed foes, not to mention her untold riches, had burned away.  We hopped down in the stone riverbed, which was about 4' deep, and walked on to our next destination.

A few twists of the hallway behind us, we climbed out of the riverbed and continued onward.  We walked on for a little while before we encountered a fork.  As is our eternal wont, we chose the leftward path.  It led us to an underground cathedral of sorts.  We walked along, unhindered, until we reached the main worship room.  There, two flaming undead were waiting for us.

Deciding to be useful, I turned them.  I wasn't powerful enough to reduce them to piles of burning dust but I did roll high enough to cause both of them to flee.  One ran the way we had come and the other unfortunate sod cowered in a corner as we wailed on him for several rounds.  Then it was mini-boss time.

A flaming skull floated out from behind the central tapestry and began his assault on us.  Despite his painful eye beams of death, we ignored the flying grinfactory and focused on the poor creature before us until it was nothing more than a smoldering heap.  By then, we were pretty banged up but we still had most of our spells.

I focused on healing the party while Nascar loving hillbilly Sorcerer JimBob launched his array of magic missiles at our flying antagonist.  As return readers will eventually come to learn, my group rarely plans for the eventuality of 'what if we can't reach our foe?'  I was the only one with a ranged weapon, and even that was only purchased after we had hit the magical limit of what DM Jimbo Baggins would let us add to our possessions.

Between JimBob and my crossbow, we managed to deal a fair bit of damage to the smirking bastard, but eventually our hillbilly's foam finger familiar (the horrors it must have seen...) caught fire and died.  I think it gave a thumbs up at its own demise.  Distraught, JimBob cast Fireball centered on himself.  Before he could say anything, Gobbler and I glared down Paddy McRuleslawer, silencing his inevitable complaint.  Turns out, his complaint would have helped to save our bacon.

Strangely, the flaming skull was not resistant to fire, much to Jimbo's astonishment.  (Side note, the nasty little bugger was immune to fire, as well as cold and electricity, but, as I mentioned, Jimbo was a lazy DM and his failure at English occasionally stretched into reading the written word.)  Neither were the rest of us.  Large fireball in an enclosed area; you do the math.

We had reached a damage stalemate and our foe flew off back down the direction we had entered from.  We, in turn, climbed behind the tapestry from which sir-smiles-a-lot had emerged.  It was a small room with a bed upon which the group took turns resting.  We had earned enough XP to achieve 2nd level and promptly powered up our characters.  That only meant we had more HP to regain however, so we spent about a week resting behind the curtain.

Before you ask, yes, I was casting my healing spells every day.  I just rolled really bad.  Ones.  Every.  Fucking. TIME!  Everyone else laughed heartily while I about had a conniption fit right there in their (the Gobbler and Jimbo roomed together) living room.

Apoplexy aside, we eventually had regained full health and braved the outer room once more.  With no sign of any low-flying flames, we regained our confidence, looted JimBob's corpse, and searched the rest of the cathedral.

We encountered a mummified Dwarf along the way but, me playing a Dwarf myself, we roleplayed ourself out of the encounter and into his burial treasure.  Score!

Loaded down with even more booty, we turned back towards the surface.  When we returned to what we expected to be an empty riverbed, we were shocked to find the black gold had returned and was about up to half capacity.  The others saw an obstacle; I saw gold lions in my future.  I insisted we sit and measure the rate of return in the river.  After a few days, we determined that you could safely fill about ten barrels of oil daily without depleting whatever stock already existed.

Smelling even more wealth, we were about to heedlessly climb down into the river when our floating foe returned.  Grumbling about our mind-numbing chatter covering the intricacies of petroleum pricing, he decided that it was time to strike.

We were a few rounds into him shooting his fiery gaze into our reduced ranks when Paddy came to the realisation that he was really good at grappling, and the skull, being tiny, had a -8 penalty.  He also deduced that, being a skull, he would lack strength, incurring a further penalty.  The hallway being only ten feet tall, and Paddy being 7+ feet tall with a reach of 3+ feet, Yoric had nowhere to run.  Paddy easily passed his grapple check (by 27, if memory serves) and we had ourselves a very angry companion.

After impersonating Hamlet for a bit and then making certain his bejeweled eyesockets were facing away from us, we began to interrogate our captive.  Though he did give us his uninspired name, Brainburn, he offered little else.  After pouring some holy water atop his crown (well equipped, remember?), our canary sang beautifully.  He was lately of Skullport, though he had been exiled for some reason (it has been too long) or another.

Gobbler and Paddy wanted to kill Brainburn, but I thought that he would be a great source of information.  Lacking a way to feasibly hold on to him, Gobbler came up the frankly brilliant idea of redesigning the chest piece of his steamcraft armour to hold the flameskull in place facing forward.  Then I came up with a stunning idea of my own.  Gobbler's armour was powered by steam; what is steam but water?  Why not... HOLY STEAM!  That would keep the little bastard in line!


On our way back, our new ally informed us of a nearby goblin entrenchment.  My ears immediately perked up.  I would lick Lady Hel's half-dead nether-regions before I would allow those green-skinned pipsqueaks to have any sort of encampment in my Dwarven ancestors' ancient home.

Brainburn led us towards them post-haste, and thanks to his information, we were able to take them by surprise.  By surprise, I mean we went old school and kicked the damn door down.

There were nine of them and only four of us; they were hopelessly outmatched.  We mopped them up with apparent glee.  Brainburn gained some respect for our wanton slaughter of the helpless, cowering buggers after we had killed the first six.  That respect would only grow over time.  It's strange how murdering with abandon will bring you closer to the entity that only hours before had tried to melt your flesh from your bones.

The last one to die spoke of a goblin king, a misnomer if ever there was one.  He told us about the location of his stronghold and Brainburn confirmed its existence.  I of course wanted to head there straightaway but I was informed that we had already reached our encumbrance limit.  Dejected, I headed their monetary wisdom but swore that we would return to rain Dwarven fury upon this so-called 'king'.

We returned once more to our primary antagonists, the inn 'elevator' guards.  They were hilariously shocked that poor JimBob had not been a winning Clydesdale and grudgingly forked over the money they owed us, which more than covered what we had spent going down across all of our previous trips.

Back in town, Gobbler's character spent some time rigging up his new chestpiece.  Per Paddy's suggestion, he added 30' of chain on a kill-trigger.  This allowed Brainburn to be able to fly around and attack our enemies as he saw fit but, should he turn on us and kill Gobbler's Gnome, the chain would retract and purge all of the armour's blessed steam directly into the traitorous rat, forcing him to suffer the same fate.  Damn, the combined deviousness of our group still gets me sometimes!

While Gobbler did that, Paddy and I returned to the Mage's guild for the third time, the last time (props if you get that reference!).  We informed the guildmaster of JimBob's heroic demise and, giving him three rounds to mourn, we were about to ask him for a fourth of his number but he began shouting obscenities and informed of that mage's did not, in fact, grow on trees.  When Paddy countered that they did come from seed, we were promptly escorted out.

After spending our newest freshly acquired fortune, we again went to see the bellmen and took new bets on whether or not our two new party members would survive.  When I say two, Jimbo had decided that Brainburn would gain XP with the rest of us as our new NPC and he would take either Wizard or Sorcerer levels, once we gained enough to level.

I personally put a call out to all my Dwarven brethren about my ideas concerning becoming an oil barony.  This would factor in heavily later.

We returned once more to the Gaping Hole Inn or whatever that rundown dwelling covering the hole which we were constantly descending into was named.  The guards now bet on the man in the iron suit and against the melon of fire.  Let the fun begin.