Summary #9: Stickiness and Ooze
Summary #10: Fun!
Summary #11: Destroying the Hook Horror and Giant Frog Kingdoms
Summary #12: Stuff Happened, We Think
Summary #13: Sudden Death!
Summary #14: Bugs, Boredom, and a Bugbear
Summary #15: A Brief Interlude

Wizard Mountain Summary # 9: Stickiness and Ooze
 

Party Roster:

Joel/Halacar/Browork (top)

Wizard Mountain Summary #10:  Fun!

A summary #10 may be scribed by Katherine, as she, Jay, and David Bjorlin
were the players for that one.  A mace +4 was retrieved in that adventure,
and Crusher the Goblin won another arena battle against a hobgoblin.  (top)

Wizard Mountain Summary #11: Destroying the Hook Horror and Giant Frog Kingdoms

Party Roster:

Halacar, 6th level fighter, 65 hp, played by Joel
Standish, 6th level fighter, 63 hp, played by Katherine
Brigling, 6th level thief, 36 hp, played by Katherine
Browork, 5th level cleric, 36 hp, played by Joel
Schreck Robinson, 3rd level half-orc katana specialist, played by David Bjorlin
Klash, 1st/3rd level human fighter/cleric, 18 hp (?), played by Mark
Tolangardh, 3rd/3rd level elven mage/cleric, 9 hp, played by Jay

(Pardon my inaccuracies in advance - I'll edit this with any corrections
people want me to make)

The Larry Consortium Official Treasury continues to bounce up and down
wildly.  This disturbing flux of funds caused the party to seek out
additional treasure once again.

We decided that with the increase in our melee power, we would finally
attempt to eliminate the two groups of hook horrors that we had encountered.

We set out for the first group, in a gaping hole dungeon in the side of the
mountain.  We decided to make sure that the old nearby ettin lair was still
clear, which proved quite wise.

The party for the first expedition was Standish, Brigling, Halacar, and
Browork.  We were suddenly beset by some sort of mutated troll being.  It
leapt at the front of the party and dealt out incredible punishment to
Standish, who stood his ground but collapsed with stunning quickness, and
was pulled to the side and restored by Browork.  Halacar attacked with
uncharacteristic ferocity and greatly injured the creature.  Cromwell the
war dog got into the action as well.  But the most spectacular moments were
when Brigling managed to sneak up behind the creature and bury his magical
sword in its back TWICE.  Although Halacar sustained a beating, Brigling
brought the creature down, and we anxiously poured acid on it.  It stayed dead.

We staggered back to town.  And found a fantastic set of magic items!

Standish gained a bastard sword +2 (now named Badasshis reptile hating
sword is named Bastard), and a bracer of wounding - it increases damage by 4
(for purposes of wounds also).  We attempted to trade the unnamed bastard
sword +1 for a magical falchion, but had no success throughout the adventure.

We then breathed a sigh, picked up Tolangardh and went to check the warrens
section near the hook horrors.  A giant tick bounced off of Standish, but
we couldn't kill it before it slithered up the wall, and we gave it no
notice and moved to the hook horrors.

We decided to attract the group by making lots of noises banging things and
yelling.  Some bats flew, and the characteristic clicking sounds were near
but eventually they just stopped.  The silence as eerie.

We advanced into a side passage and found a "chimney" room, in the sense
that the ceiling is open air and high up.  In the center was a figure in
armor with a magical mace (determined via Detect Magic).  There was some
thought this might be another lair of the dragon, and we noted holes higher
up the shaft all along the walls, but didn't immediately make the connection.

We were going to move in, but then the hook horrors came at us from the
other direction.  We pulled entirely into the passage to fight them one at
a time, but this proved unfortunate, as we heard sounds coming FROM the
chimney room.

Soon it became clear that we had stumbled on a massive hive of hook
horrors.  We clearly needed to cut our way free.  The back of the party was
held by a valiant combination of the guard dog Hinton, Cromwell, and
eventually Brigling, so that Browork and Tolangardh would remain free to keep
the fighters in the front alive as they slowly chipped away at the hook
horrors.

Standish and Halacar engaged, Standish inflicting tremendous punishment,
and Halacar simply chinking off the armor and nearly destroying his
weapon.  Slowly we began pushing our way out, one at a time, Standish
finishing a creature off, and Halacar running to fill the gap.

Unfortunately, in the back things were going poorly.  The guard dog Hinton
actually survived a first attack, but was finished off by a
second.  Cromwell jumped in and slightly injured one before going down
hurt.  Brigling jumped in the way and for a while danced effortlessly
around the creatures, Tolangardh closing his wounds.  Finally, Brigling
sustained major damage and began to bleed badly.  Browork stepped in and
took a number of blows, avoiding wounds with great luck.  But the front was
nearly clear.

The final cure was placed on Cromwell, and the party took off at a run as
the fourth hook horror went down in the front.  Halacar then ran to the
back of the party to hold off the hook horrors charging while the rest of
the party scrambled back bleeding to the entrance.  When it became clear
Brigling was in trouble, Browork dropped a Death's Door on him and we
carted him out.

We escaped successfully.

We were also mad.  And we wanted that mace.

So we returned a few days later.  This time, Brigling and Halacar moved
invisibly and silently (thanks to a potion and spell respectively) to the
lair, and managed to loot all the corpses in the chimney room, running off
with what eventually turned out to be a footman's mace +1, dwarven field
plate (put on Browork), a jade helmet with a crystal visor (valued at 2000
gp), and a silver/cold iron wraught hammer (given to Tolangardh).

Tolangardh was also allowed to use the horseman's mace +4.

Oh, and yeah, there was ANOTHER magical bastard sword, this one +2/+3 and
double dice vs. giants.  This one is now known as "Bigass." (Standish
enjoys the alliteration)

We decided to go for smaller pickings, and went for the known smaller group
of hook horrors in their lair.  This time, the battle went quite well.  We
isolated one hook horror in a room and Standish demolished it.  Then we
fought three more in a lair, and Standish inflicted SEVEN TIMES as much
damage as Halacar, who barely outdamaged the clerics, although he did
managed to drop the falchion on his foot and cost himself 100 gp in armor
repairs.

In case it isn't clear, Standish is a wrecking crew, and Halacar is nearly
invicible in terms of defense.  It's a nice split, as long as Halacar can
attract the attacks, as it allows Standish to rip through hordes of enemies.

After another lecture on how Halacar "just doesn't get formation fighting,"
and a quick stop in town to pick up Klash, (and a side trek to see Crusher
handily slay a giant beetle in the arena) the party continued it's
exploration of the hook horror environs.  We found no more of them, but we
stumbled onto what for a while seemed like the Plane of Giant Frogs.

We first encountered them in groups of five.  They were completely
invisibly camouflaged, and jumped all over Tolangardh, nearly killing
him.  They are all offense and no defense though.  And they all wear
leather belts, a fact which has mystified us to this day.  And they don't
speak any language that we do.  They fight with claws and teeth.

We killed the "boss frog" and felt that we were finished with them, but we
were QUITE wrong.  First we dodged some pit traps and false doors with no
apparent purpose.  Having disposed of about 15 of the frogs, we found a
room with a pool, guarded by particularly nasty frogs with teeth crossing
each other out of the mouth completely, giving them a mean look.  Klash
tried to imitate the noise they make, and to our surprise, they leaped over
the entire front of the party to start killing Klash.  They managed to drop
him, but we destroyed the frogs and brought Klash back up.

We noted some large eggs in the stream, and figured this was their nursery,
which would explain the ferocity of the attacks.  Figuring we were done but
wanting to pull any stragglers, Klash made the noise again.

And about 50 frogs came pouring at us.  Standish fought and killed about 25
before turning it over in sequence to David's fighter, Halacar, and back to
Standish, as the heals slowly drained out and the armor took large amounts
of damage.  We tried to sleep for spells, but waves and waves of them
continued to appear.  Finally, with about 140 frogs slain, blocking much of
the passageway, Standish skinned a number of them, and we had 800 pounds of
frog legs, and 30 pounds of eggs to bring back.  We also found a room with
weird "art" made from coins crushed against the wall, showing that the
seemingly mindlessly aggressive creatures have some
intelligence.  Unfortunately, they hurled themselves at us and committed
self-genocide, so we may never know what they were doing.  Or what the darn
belts were for, as they had no other gear.

The exhausting fight, however, was over.  Two other rooms with pools with
holes in them were found, but no portal to the plane of Frogs was
encountered.  Nor were any more frogs.  The silence and the death toll were
shocking.

In the end, we returned to town.  And Standish made a significant profit
making frogskin shoes for Klash's dancing troupe, and the frog legs and
eggs sold for about 3000 gp total.

And Crusher, in a closer than usual, but still successful fight, eliminated
a human convict with a club, bringing his record to 9-0!

It was bizarre, but in the end a successful adventure!

A quick note: Hinton was replaced by a new guard dog named Percy.  So
Standish's guard dogs have been, in order: Winston, Weatherby, Hampton,
Hinton, and Percy, I believe.

Joel/Halacar/Browork (top)

Wizard Mountain Summary #12:  Stuff Happens

Adventures with an assassin goblinoid creature.  Katherine may at some point elaborate on this adventure.

Wizard Mountain Summary #13: Sudden Death

Party Roster:

Halacar, 6th level halfling fighter, 65 hp, played by Joel
Standish, 6th level half-orc fighter, 63 hp, played by Katherine
Brigling, 6th level halfling thief, 36 hp, played by Katherine
Browork, 5th level dwarf cleric, 36 hp, played by Joel
Duran, 4th level human woodsman, 29 hp, played by Kyle
Rex, 3rd level human cleric/1st level fighter, 24 hp, played by Kyle
Skrag, 3rd level half-orc cleric, 22 hp, playec by Kyle
Neb, 3rd level human thief/1st level fighter, 18 hp, played by Alex
Megan, 4th level human mage, 15 hp, played by Alex
Zero, 4th level human fighter, 15 hp, played by Kyle
Nass, 4th level human illusionist, 8 hp, played by Alex

(And the delirious hallucination that was Taitsu AKA "Tightsuit,"
a curious amalgamation of Megan and Nass)

[Events of 12/27 to 12/29/01, from Manhattan]

Some new additions to the party were apparent. Megan and Nass returned from
their long hiatus to form the magical backbone of the party.  Duran,
woodsman of the "faux-French" accent returned to throw more daggers, and the
slightly deranged Zero also came along, he of the voluntary blinder helmet
and Ring of Blinking.  Zero has just trained to 4th level, gaining the
predicted 1 hit point, to stand at the pathetic total of 15 hp.

We set out to hunt down the assassin goblinoid that had plagued the party
in the as-yet-unpublished Summary #12 (involving Katherine, Jay, and
others?).  We searched around the area where this goblin thing left its
"trashbags" of bones and found nothing until we entered a room with a few
rotted tapestries and no apparent exits.  The thing burst out from behind
one tapestry, slit Megan's throat, and dashed back.  Standish leaped to the
fray, sprinting ahead with Cromwell and Percy and Halacar chugging it
behind.  Browork tended to Megan.  Duran buried a dagger in the thing's
back.  It was a goblinesque thing, but very nasty.

The thing leapt out from behind a corner, but Standish was not caught by
surprise, and clobbered the creature.  It turned to run, but Cromwell
leapt and bit it nastily, and it collapsed.

It had a solid gold cow shaped belt buckled worth 600 gp, and the party collected
gold from a sack as well as gold pieces used to pave the floor, with a total value
of about 3000 gold coins. The body itself was sold for 35 gp.  And we paid
to find out about the thing. Apparently they are solitary creatures that live
at the edge of goblin realms and kill goblins just because they are THAT
nasty.  We also killed a bunch of lightning beetles and got 17 glowy balls
that, unfortunately, only glow for about a week.  We sold them.

We went back to a room with 6 exits and a giant lizard skull in it.  As we
were mapping the corridors, which we quite labyrinthine, something came up and
slammed Browork in the head (at the back of the party), nearly dropping him. 
When he turned, there was a shape fleeing, something giant-like.

We tried to follow it, and then, sure enough, it jumped us from behind
again, clocking Zero quite badly, and retreating.   We tried to track
around, and we switched the good fighters to the back of the party.  But to
no avail.  We retreated to a cavern to heal up.  Then we marched back and
when we were attacked again, we chased after the creature, Standish and his
dogs in the lead, Halacar and Duran following, and Browork and Zero
bringing up the rear.  So of course, Browork and Zero were attacked.  The
thing chose to swing at Browork, and hit for much less damage when it
didn't have surprise.  It was some sort of minotaur creature.  Browork
swung his hammer and tapped it once, and it fled.  Everyone came running
back, but the creature was long gone.

Wandering around, the back of the party was attacked AGAIN. Standish and
Halacar were there this time, and Standish did a number on the creature,
though he sustained damage in the process.  It fled, bleeding profusely.
We followed it, and as we were tracking, we bumped into a fully healed minotaur
wielding a flail!  There was a brutal fight, but it was over quickly enough,
and the creature went down.

Behind it was a strange throne room.  There was a chest behind the throne
containing about 400 pp, and a pit with two troglodytes and an orc in it,
writhing in weird flames, but not burning.  We lowered a rope, which was
unaffected by the fire, and one of the creatures climbed out... and attacked!

It was undead, a juju zombie. Our cleric was able to tell us that such zombies
result from a magical device draining someone's life energy.  Its movement was
rapid and violent, unlike a normal zombie, but we had little trouble disposing
of it, preferring not to find out what would happen if we were hit by it. 
Standish cut it to pieces, and Browork hurled holy water.  We pulled the other
two out, on at a time, and killed them as well.

Our thought was that this evil throne somehow consumed creatures to
regenerate the minotaur. In fact, the whole room was identified by Duran as a
temple to the demon Bephomet, commonly worshipped by minotaurs.

We headed back home, and got some treasure.  The mace turned out to be a
footman's mace +2, which Halacar then failed to trade for a falchion
+2.  Megan, Nass, and Duran trained to 4th level, going to 15, 8, and 29 hp
respectively.

Zero decided that perhaps it was finally time to retire, since it was only a matter
of time before he perished, and went to live in his parents' garage.  He kept his
magic sword, but sold the new party cleric his Ring of Blinking.  The cleric was a
vicious half-orc named Skrag who wielded the horseman's mace and shield. So, he naturally
picked up the +4 mace to use.  We briefly contemplating killing the shambling mound
we had found in our first adventure, but were discouraged after some research because
it required piercing weapons to affect (spear, short sword), which we were critically
short on.  So, we decided to continue our explorations elsewhere. 

We found a new cave, quite distant in the mountains, and very treacherous
to reach.  Inside, we found a mushroom forest that shrieked when we entered
the middle of it.  There were clearly weird things in it that avoided
us.  Something even leapt high over us at one point.  But nothing
attacked.  In another room, we battled against five Shadows, successfully,
though several party members were weakened from the encounter, and gained a
potion as treasure.  But when we went back to sleep, Halacar found two bite
marks on his neck!  He suffered no ill effects.  Could his vampire buddy
still be following us? (It was unclear at this point whether the "vampire" was
mobile, or restricted in movement between locales, and the new folks didn't
really understand what this was all about.)

We wandered into another mushroom forest.  There was a weird noise, and
suddenly a lofted boulder came crashing down on Nass, killing him
instantly.  We tried to get out of there, but there was nothing that could
be done for Nass.

We decided to kill whatever it was after we healed up.  So we camped in the
room where we had killed the Shadows, because it had only the one entrance and appeared
defensible.  Oops.  We were in the middle of a spell shift when Skrag was found dead.
He had two bite marks on his neck that he had gained within 15 minutes of being checked by
the fighters on guard.  He had also been completely dehydrated and turned into a dried husk
during that time.

Dispirited, we fled home.  The potion turned out to be Firebreathing, which
is useful.

To replace Skrag and Nass, we gained Rex, a human warrior-turned-cleric who fought with
the horseman's mace to much greater effect than Skrag, and Neb, short for
Nebuchadnezzar, a very odd critter.  He was a crossbow specialist with the ability
to target shoot almost anything, and he had studied anatomy extensively so that he
could nearly kill even Standish or Halacar with one lucky shot. Rex bought Zero's Ring
of Blinking from the party, which had inherited it from Skrag, and Neb
came with Bracers AC 6/10.

We decided that the thing with the boulders was going down.  Hard.

We reentered the dungeon, very steamed.  As we made our way toward the
mushroom forest, a boulder was lobbed and it hit Neb, but it was fairly
cosmetic damage.  While Duran and the melee warriors battled giant lizards, Rex tossed
a Light spell up ahead, and revealed some kind of real giant!

The giant was holding a large tuba, and blew it!  We wondered what that
might summon, but nothing came to aid the giant.

After the lizards were defeated, Halacar and Standish charged the giant, running down the
long corridor to where the giant was camped with boulders.  Duran hurled several daggers
into its hide.  Neb fired his crossbow and the bolt landed with a satisfying
thunk, causing the giant to flinch visibly.  It hurled a boulder at Neb,
but missed.  The ceiling was quite high so as to allow the boulder to loft
in a smooth arc.  It still didn't explain how the giant had seen us in the
mushroom forest though.

Neb took careful aim with a second loaded crossbow and prepared to fire.  The giant,
realizing who the threat was, hurled a boulder at Neb again.  The thief saw
the boulder coming and realized his doom was upon him and released his
targeted bolt.  The projectiles passed each other in the air...

Neb was buried in a heap of stone, crushed lifeless.  The barbed bolt thudded
into the giant's stomach, causing it to yell painfully.

Standish arrived, and Halacar was in hot pursuit.  A concealed pit opened
up and Standish dropped into it, Halacar skidding to a halt.

Standish downed half a potion of Levitation and rose out of the pit to
attack the giant on the far side.  Halacar could only look on
helplessly.  Halacar gave Standish a strong push to fly across the pit
toward the giant... who swung its club, bashing Standish backward like a
baseball, Halacar diving out of the way to avoid being hit by Standish.

Browork dropped a Cure on Standish as he advanced, and tried a Hold Person
on the giant, to no avail.  It also resisted Megan's Light spell.

Megan ran forward and dropped a Spider Climb on Halacar.  Standish pushed
forward and nailed the giant, then took a large hit once again, but Halacar
climbed over the pit and stabbed the giant multiple times.  Standish was
bleeding, however.  The giant hopped back once again, and we ran
forward, a second pit opening up under Standish, but he remained in the air.

Halacar gave Standish another push to fly across the pit toward the giant...
who swung its club, bashing Standish, Halacar again taking cover.  Standish was now
bleeding profusely.

Brigling had tried to cross the pit, but had fallen, to his dismay,
twice.  He was still trying to get out of the pit to let Browork and Rex
across so they could help.  Rex tried in vain to use the Ring of Blinking to cross the
pit, but it kept Blinking him away from the pit rather than across it, but he kept
trying.

Standish could stand no longer, having hurt the giant considerably, and
Halacar had climbed across.  The giant smashed Halacar, leaving him
bleeding but still standing.  Halacar stabbed the giant once.   Standish
approached the clerics.  The giant missed the little halfling, and then
without warning, suddenly fell from wounds done by Standish!

With relief we collapsed.  We camped on the far side of the pit, in the
chamber that the giant had been retreating to.  And sadly, once again, the
vampire showed up.  Megan had several marks on her neck and was ill, but
alive.  We retreated and vowed not to return to that cave until we could
track down the vampiric monster.

The take was a non-magical tuba.  Expensive though!  We sold it for about 5000
gp.  Megan snagged Neb's Bracers of Defense to gain a respectable defense
(along with her ring +1).

Rex and Duran stayed behind for the rest of the adventure, and we didn't
try to replace the fallen Neb, so just Standish, Brigling, Halacar,
Browork, and Megan set out to slay some bugbears.

We had seen a few arrow slits where we had been shot and retreated before,
and we knew there were bugbears around there.  We snuck up invisibly and
sent Brigling along to find an entrance to the lair.  Unfortunately, he had
to carry a visible torch to do this, and the couple of bugbears in the
antechamber spotted it.  They hurled at the darkness ("I attack the darkness!"),
and Brigling was hit once, but when the party came around to attack, the bugbears
had already fled.  Since this was sort of what we intended anyway, we shrugged and
Brigling went about his search.

Brigling found a door with a secret catch near the arrow slit.

Camping, healing up, we went back in, Brigling still invisibly leading the
way, Browork covering as much of the party as he could with the +3
shield.  A large number of shots came at Browork, and they all missed or
clanged off the cleric's armor.  The party charged, Brigling opening the
door, to reveal several bugbears with heavy crossbows.

What followed was a slaughter of immense proportions.  Standish killed the
four or five with heavy crossbows with the help of a Sleep spell from
Megan, while Halacar held the corridor against the oncoming rush, one at a
time, of bugbear warriors.  Then Standish slid past Halacar and began
killing bugbears.  He brought down a dozen or so very quickly, but was
hampered by hurled spears and was forced to retreat for healing.

Brigling had killed the sleeping bugbears except for one, which he tied up
for questioning.

Halacar stood and dueled.  Would exhaustion take over?  The poor halfling
was nearly unkillable, especially with an Aid spell, but his offense left
something to be desired.  Slowly the bugbears went down, lines of them,
barely scratching their diminutive opponent.  Megan reloaded crossbows and
handed them to Standish, who was surprisingly effective with them as he
fired over Halacar.

The battle lasted a good 25 minutes (250 segments!), when finally the
bugbear leader came out.  He smashed Halacar, who bowed out of the way for
Standish to clobber the thing.  With Halacar gliding back in to take the
hits, and Standish to do the damage, we managed to kill the thing without
too much trouble, though Browork was out of spells and Standish even used his
Healing potion.

After the leader went down, the lesser combatants arrived and were
systematically slaughtered.  In all, about 50 bugbears lay dead in the
corridor.  Not one escaped.

The treasure was about 200 gp after armor costs (oops, darn full plate),
and an evil magic sword which hates lycanthropes.  We turned it in to
Browork's church for a small reward. We also sold the
bugbear into the arena (he told us little of interest). His gladiatorial
name is "Smusher the Bugbear" and he has not yet fought any opponent.

Browork trained to 6th level, gaining 5 hp to stand at 41.  Brigling
trained to 7th level, gaining 3 hp to stand at 39!

So the survivors look like this:

Halacar, 6th level fighter, 65 hp
Standish, 6th level fighter, 63 hp
Browork, 6th level cleric, 41 hp
Brigling, 7th level thief, 39 hp
Duran, 4th level woodsman, 29 hp
Rex, 3rd level cleric/1st level fighter, 24 hp
Megan, 4th level mage, 15 hp

New Obituaries:

Skrag, 3rd level cleric, 22 hp
Neb, 3rd level thief, 18 hp
Nass, 4th level illusionist, 8 hp

Last but not least, the inevitable Crusher the Goblin combat.  Crusher went
to battle against an human convict with a club and leather armor.  Crusher
came out in his full combat regalia, some chain mail and a short
sword.  They battled endlessly, neither able to hit anything smaller than a
large house, but eventually Crusher was victorious with a single nasty stab!

His record is now improved to double digits, 10-0!

Hope you enjoyed our adventures!  More to come in the New Year!

Joel/Halacar/Browork with some minor editing from Kyle/Zero/Duran/Skrag/Rex (top)

Wizard Mountain Summary #14: Bugs, Boredom, and a Bugbear

Standish (Katherine)
Brigling (Katherine)
Schreck (David Bjorlin)
Tolangardh (Jay)

We paid a sage to research for a total of 8 days to figure out what
was draining the life's blood out of sleeping characters near the
mushroom forest (which was missing from Edwin's notes in some strange
fashion).   It is an invisible cave slug that sneaks up and
drinks all of your plasma. You can protect your campsite with a
circle of expensive salt. We bought an emegency can in case the party
MUST camp in the cave..

We decided to go looking for "new" trouble. After MUCH debate, we
went to the toll house. We found cookies, but they were sent back to
the originating server. No. Wait. That's not right.

We went to the toll house/booth/death trap. The road up the face of
the Mtn hugs the cliff and drops off sharply on the right side. The
house straddles the road. As we approached we could see that there
were a number of arrow slits in the house on the right portion and
across the span.

Inside the arch, there is a door on the left with no apparent way to
open it. Above, a number of holes (I can't remeber the term right
now) would allow for liquid death to rain down. Brigling (I think)
climbed around on the outside of the building.

He saw that the room on the right (with arrow slits) is very well
furnished. The upper level arrow slits are covered with tapestries.
He could hear voices speaking in an unknown language (perhaps a giant
type). The roof has rocks piled on top and there is another door
towards "the left" that leads into the cliff face above the house.
This one has a ring, but is barred from within. We gave up.

We then decided to see if there was another undiscovered country, I
mean entrance to the Mtn. We followed the trail into the swamp and we
got ambushed by a nest of centipedes. Giant centipedes. One of the
dogs got bitten and Standish ordered Tol to heal the dog. Meanwhile
all of the other people (except Tol) cut apart one of the centipedes
each. Tol decided "screw the pooch" and shot two magic missile in 6
seconds and went back to healing the dog. Thus Tol had a higher kill
total for the fight (there were only 5) than ANY other party member
at that point (they only had 2 HP each). The dog was fine.

We continued flirting with Death and her minions by continuing along
the path. It ended at the edge of the swamp near a creek. We decided
to follow the creek up to the Mountain. Lo and Behold! We found a
creek bed. There is also an entrance into the mountain. After a
little distance, there are two sets of stairs flanking a small water
fall. We climbed the right set and went downstream. The water fall is
due to a small overflow at that point. {{{I just had an idea. What
would happen  if we smashed the stone at the overflow point. It would
make it more difficult to pass through, but it might also have
interesting effects on the dungeon.}}} The main flow proceeds from
off to the left to off to the right.

As Edwin observed, at every juncture where we could have chosen
"interesting" or "boring," we chose boring. We followed the river,
bypassing a couple of passages on the left (following the WM
right-hand-rule) and found some 3 ft high tunnels on the right.
Brigling investigated a few of these while invisible and we have a
partial map. We eventually found three Xvarts that tried to convince
us to go fight the kobolds and leave them alone. We went home, got a
full load of spells and came back and let them knock Tol unconscious
(to lull them into a feeling of superiority) and then Brigling back
stabbed one (on the second try) and Tol Slept the other two. We
continued to explore the 4 ft tunnels and found a room with some
defensive emplacements and then a room with about 100 xvarts. We
parleyed a bit. They said the kobolds were out the other side of
their lair and we decided that we didn't have enough firepower to
kill all 100 of them (Tol could only hit 10 at that point, then they
would have swarmed all over us).

We surrendered to the late hour and watched the Bugbear fight (in his
first match I think). He fought a giant lizard. Brigling wagered our
beer money (our paltry 4gp take for the adventure) against the
Bugbear. Schreck wagered 50gp for the Bugbear. As usual it was a
whiff fest, but after a while each combatant was down to 1 HP. The
lizard had a better chance to hit the Bugbear, but the Bugbear had
more damage dealing capability. The Bugbear had one last chance to
finish the fight, but missed and got crunched for failing to do his
duty.

At least next time, we won't have to decide where to go.

=====
Jay (top)

Wizard Mountain Summary #15: A Brief Interlude of Death and Destruction

The title of the summary may be longer than the story, but here goes.

Halacar, 6th level fighter, 65 hp, played by Joel
Standish, 6th level fighter, 63 hp, played by Katherine
Browork, 6th level cleric, 41 hp, played by Joel
Brigling, 7th level thief, 39 hp, played by Katherine
Rhisa, 1st level fighter, 3rd level mage, 22 hp, played by Dean
Tolangardht, 3rd level cleric/mage, 9 hp, played by Jay

Rhisa, a new mage with bow specializiation, joined the party!

The party decided to do a quick strike on the hook horror kingdom/lair.

Instead of just walking into the chimney room, we decided to approach from above.  We found a set of stairs that led up, and we followed it, spotting a hole that looked down to the corridor where we had begun our first attack.

We saw a few figures scampering past down the hole, but then they heard us moving about.  We found another ramp that began to lead down, and heard sounds of hook horrors coming from behind us to cut off our escape.  We turned around to face them, when another hook horror appeared from behind the party.   The battle was begun!

Browork covered the back, scratching the hook horror there and evading all hits, but the rest of the party focused on clearing our path to the exit.  Standish tore ghastly wounds in the first hook horror and brought it down while Halacar missed lots and Tolangardht and Brigling showered them with acid.  Rhisa and Tolangardht also threw Magic Missiles.

The second hook horror started ripping on Standish, and Halacar proved surprisingly effective this time.  Tolangardht landed Aids on the front line fighters, and the slaughter continued.  That hook horror went down, then a third in short order, and the front was clear!  The last hook horror fighting Browork turned to run, but Halacar and Standish turned and clocked it, dropping it in combination with the ranged fire from the acid!

For the moment, we were clear of enemies, and took that moment to retreat (primarly due to real world time constraints).

We got back in time for a Crusher fight.  Crusher took on a gibberling, a weird chaotic creature with a longsword.  Crusher was given a shield, studded leather, and a short sword.  The gibberling stepped in and nearly took down Crusher on the first blow, but then it missed and Crusher struck back, stabbing it twice in rapid succession, and dropping it!

XP ranged from 700 to 1200.

Joel/Halacar/Browork (top)