September 19, 2014 Session Report--We Have A Long Way To Go

As I said in my immediately preceding post, the group got together this past Friday, September 19, 2014. We had a great session.

I have not previously described on this blog any of the gaming sessions nor explained my campaign's backstory. Without going into too much detail, I'll do so now.

The campaign is set in the Grey Box Forgotten Realms. For purposes of this campaign, I have ignored everything that came after 1987-e.g., Drizzt, the Spellplague, the Sundering, the whole nine yards. None of it ever happened. The campaign began last year with the PCs exploring my reworked version of the Caves of Chaos from that classic module, The Keep on the Borderlands. Castle Crag, just north of Arabel in the Kingdom of Cormyr, stood in for the eponymous Keep. I located the Caves of Chaos in the Gnoll Pass just to the north of Castle Crag.

At the end of that first adventure, the PCs learned that the Caves' evil high priest, a treacherous cur named Merek, was working for some puppet master named "Amalric". The priest's (incomplete) journal, an evil-looking orb, and Merek's other personal effects revealed that Merek had first encountered this Amalric somewhere deep within the Spiderhaunt Wood.

Naturally, the PCs followed this clue to the Spiderhaunt. Before leaving, they researched various legends and tales about the Wood in the usual way by conferring with sages, visiting taverns, etc. These sources revealed that the Spiderhaunt might hide terrible secrets better left alone. The doughty PCs ignored all this, of course, and set out.

(One brief word about the party. It consists of a fighter, a ranger, a magic-user, a monk, a cleric, and a druid. All the PCs are currently fifth level except for the druid, who is sixth. Although the group originally had a halfling, he was torn apart by zombies in the first adventure. The PCs are now all human.)

In the session before last, the PCs discovered that the Spiderhaunt Wood hid the ruins of a vast human civilization that fell over 10,000 years ago. This civilization's capital city, Olynthus Kios, stood on the shores of a great lake located deep within the Spiderhaunt. The city itself (which was surrounded by a strange shimmering sphere of force) was a battleground between various factions of gnolls, lizard men, and giant spiders. They all appeared to have been placed there to fight for some unknown purpose.  Faced with this situation, the PCs concocted a masterful plan that enabled them to successfully assault the largest building in the city, which the lizard men were using as their base of operations. (It was this plan that led one of the players to play the theme from The A-Team that I mentioned in my last post.)

In the session before Friday's, the PCs discovered a dungeon beneath this main house. They explored the dungeon obviously and learned that it actually existed in some strange, shadowy demi-plane. They fought a variety of monsters and eventually discovered that it was being used as a prison for a paladin named Gawain.They released Gawain after defeating a demonic guardian. Gawain told them that his former party (which had included Merek) had inadvertently released this Amalric from the very prison in which Gawain was bound. Ten thousand years before, Amalric had led this ancient human civilization, known as the Olynthians, in a genocidal war against the elves and their allies. The Olynthians lost. The elves defeated the Olynthians, burned their cities, and imprisoned Amalric (who had given his soul to the god Apophis to become both the Realms' first vampire and a high priest and wizard of unimaginable power). After his release, Amalric corrupted Gawain's party (except for Gawain himself) and sent them out to foment who knows what kind of chaos--all in an effort to revenge himself upon the elves and raise the human race once again to its rightful place as first among all Faerun's intelligent species.

It was at this point that this past Friday's gaming session opened. With Gawain in tow, the party took a considerable amount of time just getting out of the dungeon. (The one player who usually draws the map hasn't been able to attend for some time. This meant that everyone else just sort of had to wing it.) In the process of finding their way out, the party defeated a githyanki anti-paladin and retraced their steps more than once.  The magic-user also got doused by a jet of boiling acid when he decided to check out a blank wall that served as the apparent dead end of a long, meandering hall. Unfortunately, he missed his saving throw and took 14 hit points of damage--more than half his total. His robe was also ruined. Since he was now half-nude, the other players naturally poked fun at the magic-user--despite the fact that they had originally suggested that he check the wall for secret doors in the first place. Nothing like true friends to stick by you in a pinch.

Anyway, the party eventually found its way out of the dungeon. (Gawain did not go with them. Although he did not know it, he was actually dead. Amalric had killed him and turned him into a shade, unable to leave the dungeon. Gawain vanished in agony just as the other party members were climbing up into the light.)

The PCs exited the city without incident and set off out into the Spiderhaunt. Before he was destroyed, Gawain had showed them how to use the orb they had found in Merek's possession. It revealed the current locations of four of the members of Gawain's party. The PCs decided to follow a fighter who had set off for who knows what purpose deep into the heart of Anauroch, The Great Desert. Unlike their original, far more exciting trip through the Spiderhaunt, the PCs had only one random encounter with some skeletons along the way. After the critters they'd encountered in Olynthus Kios and its dungeon, these skeletons were no problem at all. The group emerged from the forest to rendezvous with a couple of men-at-arms whom their patron had originally hired to guard their horses. (These guys had refused to go into the Spiderhaunt for obvious reasons, but had nonetheless waited faithfully for their employers to return.)

The PCs then decided to head to Dagger Falls to re-equip themselves for their long journey into The Great Desert. Along the road, they encountered (again randomly) a huge merchant caravan of over 300 people on its way to Arabel in Cormyr. Virtually a traveling city in itself, the caravan had everything the PCs needed for their trip--barrels for water, provisions, equipment, and a new robe for the magic-user. After spending a couple of days with the caravan, the PCs set off in the direction that the orb suggested they go.

The session ended with another random encounter. The PCs took out a party of twelve hobgoblins in the narrow pass between the Desertmouth Mountains and the Border Forest. As with the skeletons, these hobgoblins were no match for the PCs, who eliminated the hobgoblins with relative ease. Of course, The Great Desert, with all its monsters and other terrors, awaits them and will certainly prove a far greater challenge.

Although the PCs did not defeat any boss monsters or acquire any shining treasure hoard this time around, everyone still had fun, and the two new players added an extra element of excitement and camaraderie.

All in all, it was a great time.