This session played Wednesday, 25 August 2011, at The Grind on Main.
Featuring:
Columbo the Halfing
Floria the wizardess
Gamgar the Dwarf
Griswald the midget fighter
Our heroes are approached by two peasants seeking their help. One is a brewer, the other a stick-gatherer.
They choose to help the stick-gatherer. His dog was eaten by a giant toad that came out of a subterranean lair that was hidden behind a pile of sticks.
Our heroes descend into an underground temple, seemingly devoted to a trio of blashphemous toad-like deities. They find a pit that opens up into a watery lair full of giant frogs, and a bowl full of black ooze in front of one of the idols.
Throwing a rock into the ooze causes it to form into a horrible, ropy monster shape that seems immune to thrown daggers, but Floria blasts it to smithereens with her wand of lightning bolts.
Descending down the stairs, they find some rooms with cult-like materials in them, and a locked door with a glowing blue rune on it. They decide not to touch that one.
Behind a cage door lies that watery hell where squamous bloated toad-things breed and grow to unconscionable sizes. Our heroes decide to steer clear for the nonce, even though Gamgar can see glints of platinum scattered across the cave floor.
Instead, this brave quartet decides to unbar the barred door, and finds a burial chamber, with two sealed niches in the walls. While debating how best to smash these niches, the undead toad-things take the initiative, smashing out of their sealed prisons! Oh, the folly of opening barred doors!
It quickly becomes apparent that only Gamgar's magic sword will affect them. Not even Darth Vader's plate mail can aid Griswald's mighty fist, which seems no better than that of a child against these corrupted shamblers, whose dirty claws burn with plague as they rend flesh! Floria blasts them with a lightning bolt, but only one is destroyed. The other fights on! Columbo douses this remaining toad-thing-ghoul with oil, but Floria's hurled torch goes awry! Gamgar is felled by an awful concussion, reducing his hit points to -2 and his Intelligence to zero! Columbo grabs the torch and sets the foul thing ablaze, but to no avail, it keeps coming! Griswald rushes to retrieve the magic sword, but the undead creature smashes his ribs and collapses one of his lungs! Finally, Columbo succeeds where Griswald failed and manages to hack this inhumanity back into the grave with Gamgar's ruby-pommeled sword.
Floria and Columbo drag Gamgar to the surface, and enlist the stick-gatherer in gathering Griswald as well. They take them to the Clerics of Law, who are preaching in Threshold, but receive a frosty welcome. The clerics heal the two fallen warriors, and tell of a Sybil of Sanctimony to the north who may agree to heal poor crippled, brain-dead, diseased Gamgar if he repents of his sins, but it seems as if another Dwarf has seen the end of his adventuring days in the Black Peaks, this one having lost his mind instead of his body.
The other three adventurers split the considerable loot, found inside and upon two statues in the upper level, and thank their gods they were at least not outnumbered.
Loot
200 gold pieces
1500 platinum pieces
two 50gp emeralds