67: Slaughter of the Silver Man

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This session played Wednesday, 31 August 2011, at The Grind on Main Street.

Featuring:

Floria the sorcerous child
Columbo the halfling
Merrigold Serpenthelm the (de facto dual-classed fighter/)thief

Our bold, intrepid heroes decide to return to the Caves of the Creepy Crab Crawlers but fail to find any crabs. Instead, they discovers dungeons built by hand, slay a few guards, a high priest, and a man made of silver in order to recover a giant ruby.

This adventure is from the first four collected Fight On! issues, but I haven't looked to see which one it is because I don't know if we're finished it yet.

More Stupid Hirelings

The trio arranges to hire the four Banger Brothers, who aren't really brothers or anything, but specialize in jobs that need banging out. Merrigold buys a trio of dogs as well, a door-opening dog, a lion-dog, and a climbing dog, which is the one he puts a Continual Light-collar on. The brothers have bangin' clubs and axes and are given torches.

Someone Has Been Pilfering Cheese!

Upon discovering constructed passageways, our heroes discover a guard in a storeroom. The dog opens the door, and invisible Merrigold sneaks in, but the guard hears him. Floria calls out to him from down the hallway, and as he turns to her, Merrigold strikes him down from behind. When they search his body, they find a note saying that the cheese is for the priests only, and whoever has been stealing cheese should stop. Merrigold promptly locates the cheese and straps it to the back of one of his dogs.

A Cook-Eating Spiral

After finding an empty room with a strange, hypnotic, vertigo-inducing spiral, this stalwart adventuring band comes across a kitchen, where the aged cooks fall on their hands and knees, wailing and pleading for our heroes not to kill them. Merrigold and Columbo tie up these four cooks and question them, discovering that the high priest is behind an adjacent door. Merrigold decides to stash the cooks in the strange spirally room, but when two of them disappear into the floor, our heroes get creeped out and go back to the kitchen.

Attack on the High Priest Part 1

The door in the kitchen leads to a twenty-foot hallway and another door. The Bangers are sent to break down the second door, but then a massive swarm of wasps creeps out from under it and attacks them! Merrigold holds the first door shut with his prodigious ogre-like strength while Floria and Columbo push furniture in front, and the Bangers moan miserably on the other side.

Guards and Slaves

The party encounters another group of guards, but Floria puts them to sleep and they are quickly bound and gagged. They are questioned, and then Merrigold murders them when the others aren't looking. Another room reveals four slaves who say they have been held prisoner here for years and wish only to see the open sky once again. Our heroes free them and they reveal a way to a second door to the high priest's quarters.

Attack on the High Priest Part 2

When they attack through the second door, one of the dogs is stung by wasps, but Floria's lightning bolt sizzles through the swarm, the high priest, and the warrior he was apparently communing with. And his book. On the way out, our heroes encounter an elf and a dwarf on some quest, and warn them off this area before discovering that the Bangers are still alive. The newly-freed slaves are instructed to carry them back to the surface. Merrigold takes them to the clerics of Law who are very sanctimonious but agree to heal such good, church-going boys.

Silver Man

Having recovered a triangular amulet from the high priest, the trio finds out it is a key to the inner sanctum that is supposedly guarded by a smoke demon. No smoke demon is found, but there is a silver man holding up a giant ruby. Columbo knocks the ruby out of his hands, and Merrigold catches it in his hands. Then the silver man comes to life, and batters Columbo about the head! Merrigold stabs it in the back, leaving a huge gash, and the dogs attack its hands. After Columbo is smacked around once more, both he and Merrigold dive out of the way and Floria blasts the silver man into pieces with a lightning bolt. Sadly, one of the dogs was unable to get out of the way and was also blown to smithereens.

Loot

Our heroes slew a few dudes here and there, and a high priest, recovered a few gold pieces here and there that I didn't bother to keep track of, and recovered this giant fucking ruby that the jeweler tried to cheat them out of because it's worth 50,000gp. The trio said he'd get a 5% commission if he could find somebody to buy it for that much, but it's probably hopeless. Everybody levelled up, though, so they don't mind that much.