Gobbers and Grave Robbers

So last night we finally got to start playing in our full metal fantasy campaign. The adventure brought us together in one of the standard fantasy role-playing tropes: we were hired to guard a caravan. the first two weeks of our trip were completely uneventful, but as we got close to our destination and entered the Widow's Woods, the caravan was ambushed by "gobbers." These little guys were apparently some kind of swamp goblin. Pretty easy to kill, especially if you're a huge half-orc with a greatsword. 1d10+3 damage is your friend! The gobbers brought with them a bit of technology which allowed at least one of them to escape the battle. He was carrying some kind of smoke fog machine which blanketed the area with a thick, oily fog. We couldn't see terribly far in it, but that really didn't restrict melee combat in any way. Unfortunately, it did let the gobber with the machine get away so we couldn't get our own hands on it. When we made it to the caravan's destination, we were hired to investigate a series of grave robbings in town. In return for our investigation, Father Dumas of a local church, gave us free room and board, use of any of his healing skills, and a wand of healing (a concession to a party that didn't include a healer of any kind). We agreed (although our rogue was hoping for more monetary compensation) and set out to check the sites of the robbed graves. Father Dumas told us there had been seven instances total, starting just under a month previously. The most recent one was just three days ago. The place we went was the home of a rich local merchant. He told us the basics, that one graves had been crypts had been broken open and a body stolen, but would not let us investigate the actual scene. We went next to a farm, where the farmer confirmed that his father's body had been stolen from the family graveyard. The farmer's son claimed to have seen his grandfather get up and walk off into the woods. The third farm we hit turned out to be the jackpot, as the distraught widow explained that her husband, who's body had been stolen a week ago, had been part of the jury during a witchcraft scandal some ten years before. She recognized several more names from our list of robbed graves as men who had served on the trial. Rather than visit any of the other farms, we returned to Father Dumas, who confirmed that all of the missing bodies belonged to people who had served on the witch trial jury. Apparently some ten years previously, a then-new city councilman accused five woman of witchcraft. They were tried, swiftly convicted, and executed in the Widow's Wood. Four of the beheaded corpses were interred in a crypt there in the woods, while the fifth, the leader of the coven and Dumas's own sister in law, was buried on sacred ground behind a wealth of holy seals. Our next course of action was obvious, and we headed out into the woods to find the crypt. We encountered a couple of swamp zombies on the way, but blew right through them and kept on until we found our destination. The crypt had been broken open, so we headed straight in. We searched the whole place fairly methodically, going into each room and killing pretty much anything we found. The rogue kept getting himself into trouble as we went. He stopped to collect some gold from the sand in a room mostly filled with water, and was attacked by some kind of giant squid. He tried looting a skeletop, and was attacked by the acid tendrils of a plant underneath it. We did come across a live gobber, and interrogated him instead of killing him, but he lied to us about a big treasure room and eventually led a bunch of his friends back to find us. We eventually found the burial chamber, guarded by three big skeletons in black armor. We took them apart after a brief battle, and confirmed that the four coffins were open and empty. There was evidence of a strong resurrection spell having been cast there, and a big needle and spool of heavy black thread indicating someone had sewn heads back onto decapitated bodies. Bad news indeed, and our cue to get back to town and check the fifth tomb, that of the head of the coven. That was our stopping point for the night. Lane had graciously kept the store open a lot later than usual to accommodate us (though to be fair, he seemed pretty engrossed in the game of Descent he was playing with a couple in the back). It turned out that we had accumulated enough experience to all level up, which puts my half-orc fighter that much closer to the cleave and greater cleave feats. The best part of the night was the way the group seemed to mesh together. Not every gaming group I've been in has really managed to gel; I think that's a big part of what ended my own campaign. But we did. And we proved that gamers are pretty much the same everywhere. We told exactly the same kinds of jokes I've heard in every gaming group I've ever been in, made all the same goofy suggestions, even had the same dice superstitions. I had a blast, and can't wait for next week. Hopefully we'll get more into the full metal part of the fantasy then. We had a chance this time, but it turned out the one room we forgot to search extensively turned out to be the one where we could have gotten our hands on our first pistol. Our arcane engineer is still kicking himself over that, though my fighter would find it more trouble than it's worth. He trusts to the steel of his sword.