This past weekend, we managed to assemble the group again to work on the
Barrow of the Forgotten King. Chris wasn't with us, so
Chad ran his character as well as the one I had used for the first adventure. While the party didn't make all that much progress through the crypts, I had a really good time, and hopefully everyone else did too. There was more combat than role-playing this time around, and things seemed to go pretty smoothly.
I started out getting everyone more or less up to speed on what had gone on
last time around. Because the module gets more difficult from this point forward, I had tallied up and sent out the XP to date so everyone could go ahead and level up. I usually prefer to have a return to town role-playing session for leveling, but I do want to ensure they have the best chance to survive what's coming.
The first thing, obviously, was to confirm that the search & loot tasks had been completed the previous session. That done, the group rested for the evening to heal hit points and recover spells. The previous day of hard adventuring had pretty much wiped them out. They backtracked a bit to find a more defensible position, posted their guards, and rested. The night passed uneventfully.
In the morning, they returned to the scene of their last fight, and attempted to cross the bridge which would lead them to the next door. Unfortunately, a large serpent made of water rose up out of the canal and confronted them. When Ral tried to lie his way past it, using variations of "we're here to relieve you," it ordered them to leave the area the way they had come in, and refused to allow them to pass. After a bit more fruitless arguing, the party finally decided to backtrack and see if they had missed something.
There was the rope ladder they had bypassed last session, so they decided to give it a shot. It rose some 200 feet through a tunnel which opened up in the wooded hills above. They emerged from a hole next to an enormous statue of some ancient king, who held his mighty sword out pointed to the east. They didn't have much time to enjoy the scenery, however, because some kind of hairless, houndlike creature came running out to greet them. From the huge toothly mouth in its eyeless head, it spat a gob of greenish fluid at Ral, but narrowly misses. The fluid began to hiss and smoke immediately on striking the ground. Angel Moonwhisper immediately fired off a ray of ice from her fingertips, hitting the beast square in the chest. Kil Stonecutter began backing off away from the creature, not wanting to face it head to head, while Star Moonwhisper started summoning a celestial dog to join the fray. Ron Moonwhisper turned to Kil and cast barkskin on him to toughen him up. The monster spat again at Ral, who easily side-stepped the glob. Unfortunately, he was standing immediately in front of Angel, who took a direct hit from the sticky goo. Thankfully, it was some kind of webbing this time, rather than acid, and she was just stuck in place. While everyone fired arrows off into the woods, missing the creature badly, the celestial dog arrived, only to be immediately killed by the creature's vicious jaws. Ral finally managed to hit with an arrow, while Kil came to his senses and ran forward to engage the beast. Ron cast an entanglement out around Kil and his opponent. The creature managed to run out of the entangled area, but Kil got off a shot as it ran away, and his sword bit deeply. Ral snuck up behind it and planted his sword deep in its back as well. Kil ended it all by making it over to decapitate it with a mighty blow.
The battle was well worth it when they discovered a chest containing a suit of full plate armor which fit Kil well enough. He put it on while Angel was getting unstuck, then the group descended once more into the crypts. They returned to the water serpent and spoke with it some more, finally convincing it that they were not in league with the graverobbers who had already come through. When it believed that they were, in fact, chasing those same bandits, it immediately let them pass to cross the bridge and move on.
The next room turned out to be a large tomb with four apparently important crypt doors. Each one had a statue in front of it, and two more onyx statues guarded a door on the far end of the room. From another door opposite the crypts, Star heard some noises, so the party gathered there and tried sneaking in. When Ral made it all the way to the bottom of the winding stairs inside and stepped around a wall, he was greeted by a large hobgoblin who thrust a rapier into him. Despite the fact it was a critical hit, it did little damage and Ral was able to withdraw, face to face combat not being his thing. Star and Kil both moved in to attack, but both missed, and Kil took another low-damage critical hit for his troubles. (My dice rolling was on fire during this encounter.) Ral backs out of the area, calling out that he is preparing to throw down the "magic anti-hobgoblin coins" he had. Oddly enough, his bluff worked briefly, allowing Star to make a solid hit with her mace, while Kil's greatsword missed again. Kil left the area, and the hobgoblin jumped out to stab Star before the whole party retreated back into the tomb.
While they continued to try and bluff about their magic coins, including throwing some down the stairs, the hobgoblin were-rat transformed to his rat form and hid behind a statue. The party waited for quite a while with readied actions, then finally went back in, only to find the area apparently empty. My amazing dice rolls, combined with the were-rat's extremely high hide skill, somehow managed to keep him hidden, although I couldn't for the life of me explain how. Ral finally forced his way behind the statue, displacing the poor were-rat out into the open, where everyone's new readied actions all fired off at once, killing him.
We decided to end the session there, after the search & loot phase, of course. That last encounter had been pretty frustrating for everyone, I think, because there were a lot of combat rounds where nothing happened and no one did anything. I was as surprised as anyone that the were-rat managed to hide so well; his plan was to make a break for it to try and escape if possible, surrender otherwise. Had he not been killed so quickly and decisively, he could have given a fair amount of information about what was going on and what the party will face next time around. But that's how it often goes.
I'm hoping we can get together again the weekend after this one to continue the adventure.
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