(From the jour­nal of Zgard ad-Din, a lieu­tenant of cav­alry in Hamza’s Heretics)

This mis­sion has placed Sharif and me in strange com­pany on a mys­te­ri­ous quest to rid the vil­lage of Hom of a curse placed by a gypsy witch (I spit in her mother’s milk). We were given a map of the Great Old Wood by the wiz­ard Delon and told to make for the druids on the east side of the Wilde River to enlist their aid.

We accom­pany mem­bers of the Black Swan Com­pany in the employ of The­rion the Thau­maturge: Starla, a ranger; Mil­ton, a half-elven illusionist-fighter; and Gar­shak, a half-orc fighter-assasisn. We have been joined by Dan­daly, a cleric; Tris­t­ian, a half-elf thief-magic user; and Norion, a pal­adin who is pos­sessed of con­sid­er­able horse­man­ship matched only by his sense of honor. We are a mighty force indeed!

Day 1: We were ambushed by three gnolls in the night. We slaugh­tered them.

Day 2: Our party dis­cov­ered a small, peace­ful lake in the woods — too peace­ful, it turned out. The whole place had been put to an enchanted sleep, includ­ing a young woods­man in a pavil­ion by the lake. The fix was sim­ple enough — a water nymph made her­self man­i­fest to us and charmed Tris­t­ian into pour­ing a magic elixr into the lake, break­ing the spell. It is for­tu­nate for us that her intent for him was as benign as it was. Tris­t­ian prat­tled about her beauty all the next day.

Day 3: Ambushed by brig­ands. We slaugh­tered them, then dou­bled back with a pris­oner to guide us to their camp. This we har­ried mer­ci­lessly; Norion, Mil­ton and I charged the camp accom­pa­nied by phan­tas­mal horse­men con­jured by our illu­sion­ist while the rest of the party struck the camp from behind. Casu­al­ties: Gar­shak par­a­lyzed by a trapped chest in the camp, Tris­t­ian mauled by a goat.

Charge!

Day 4: We ate mut­ton and set out for for the druids’ abode. We spent the after­noon lis­ten­ing for rumors in the the Wild­wood Inn, a rest­ing place in the for­est just off the Old Wilder­ness Road. We camped by Quiet Lake. The pal­adin and I awoke to find our horses, wagon, and pos­ses­sions stolen! We have been robbed by were rats. The filthy crea­tures had missed Garshak’s magic sword, and he made great use of it slay­ing one and griev­ously injur­ing another. Tris­t­ian charmed her, but botched the inter­ro­ga­tion break­ing the charm. She turned into a giant rat and fled our bonds just as dawn was break­ing. We shall pur­sue them to their lair and slay them all!

The party delved the dun­geon one last time and got into a hell of a fight with seven hob­gob­lins that had been kept in sta­sis for cen­turies in the secret library of Venger!

Starla the ranger, Gar­shak the fighter, and Sharif with three Arab mer­ce­nar­ies stepped on the tele­port tile first — and got trapped when one of the hob­gob­lins deac­ti­vated the tile!

After a vicious tus­sle, our heroes (hero, actu­ally, for only Starla was left stand­ing) prevailed.

The slain were the mer­ce­nar­ies Omar, Mah­moud, and Mehmed (two of the three “Mohammeds”); Gar­shak and Sharif were crit­i­cally injured but stabilized.

The­rion was very, very inter­ested in the incred­i­bly well pre­served library and decided to lay claim to the ruins.

Our heroes head north after their first suc­cess­ful dun­geon crawl to find new adven­ture in the north­ern widerness…

Our doughty heroes are rest­ing with the car­a­van atop the ruined upper works of the dun­geon, gird­ing for one final dive into the darkness.

They have dis­cov­ered a tele­por­ta­tion tile lead­ing to a room with a huge switch, which Mil­ton straight­away pulled and drained one of huge cis­terns in the north sec­tion of the dungeon.

Our heroes tried to explore far­ther south in the under­ground edi­fice, but were turned back by three inpen­e­tra­ble fire bee­tles. Let’s hope there’s noth­ing impor­tant through that door…

And, most sig­nif­i­cantly, Mil­ton dis­cov­ered another tele­por­ta­tion tile that leads to a gian room filled with books, a mas­sive desk…and hob­gob­lins whose sta­sis is bro­ken when some­one tele­ports in.

The party wisely fell back to count what trea­sure they were able to haul out and bind thier wounds. But per­haps more nox­ious than the fire bee­tles and hob­gob­lins below is Therion’s steady and profanity-laden reminders that he’s pay­ing them to do a job — explore that dungeon!

I’m try­ing to remem­ber what hap­pened a year ago, because we’re going to pick the game back up!

Accord­ing to my notes, the party came back down with six vol­un­teers from the car­a­van guard. They were ambushed by the orcs, but the party busted the ambush and killed the orcs. Tim was found and sent back to the car­a­van to recover.

Now they’re fight­ing their way down one side of the dun­geon and have found a room at the end of a long cor­ri­dor.  Three bags of sil­ver coins occupy the room…as well as a mys­te­ri­ously carved cir­cle, traced with faintly glow­ing pen­ta­cles, lines and glyphs. Strange magic seems to be afoot!

What will our heroes do about this odd room?

The story so far…

Our fear­less mer­ce­nar­ies are back on the job after two weeks of recov­er­ing in the rel­a­tive safety of the car­a­van. While they were recov­er­ing, The­rion the Thau­maturge nego­ti­ated a truce with the gnomes of Clan Iron Bad­ger: a 500 gold piece weregeld for each of the five gnomes that the adven­tur­ers had slain ear­lier. This 2,500 g.p. debt weighs heav­ily on the adven­tur­ers’ minds…

Dur­ing their first scout­ing mis­sion after the fight with Clan Iron Bad­ger, they found a clear­ing in the deep­en­ing woods with the ruins of what used to be a cir­cu­lar stone struc­ture. Near the mid­dle of it is a large, talk­ing tree and a spi­ral stair­case lead­ing down into the ground. After quizzing the tree, our heroes dis­cover that there is a great evil lurk­ing below, and the tree’s role as a “guardian of the green wood” is to main­tain the bal­ance of good and evil in this wood. He has been at this spot for about a fort­night and observed the com­ings and goings of crea­tures, both four-footed and two.

The adven­tur­ers gather dead fire­wood for the car­a­van, care­ful to be very respect­ful of the trees from which it came, and sally forth into the dun­geon. There, in the dank and slimy dun­geon, they find an ancient alchemist lab, com­plete with an itin­er­ant fire bee­tle which Gar­shak quickly dis­patches. They har­vest the glow­ing sacs in the bee­tle in order to sell them at the next town they find.

In the next room is a beau­ti­ful thief called Nadja and a small hoard of cop­per. She tells them a tale of woe in which she fool­ishly decided to raid the dun­geon alone, against the advice of the rest of her party. Now that our heroes have found her, she can guide them to a mag­i­cal trea­sure that will help them escape the demonic pres­ence she says is will trap them all down here.

Tim the Younger and Mil­ton the Illu­sion­ist are skep­ti­cal, to say the least, but even­tu­ally the party agrees to fol­low her. As they pass the stairs that lead to the sur­face, the two make for the stairs. Nadja, hor­ri­fied that even approach­ing the stairs will arouse the demonic pres­ence, draws her scim­i­tar and cuts Tim down as he pesters her by feign­ing step­ping on the bot­tom step.

Con­vinced that she is sin­cere after dar­ing to attack such a numer­i­cally supe­rior party, they adven­tur­ers stanch Tim’s bleed­ing and fol­low her to a cir­cu­lar, water-filled cis­tern. After press­ing a secret switch to raise the portcullis to a land­ing jut­ting out into the water, Nadja flees and three slimy ten­ta­cles and two eyes pop out of the water.

A des­per­ate fight ensues. Grom is pulled in first and drowned; Mil­ton casts phan­tas­mal force and cre­ates a ten­ta­cled mon­ster to attack the real one that is men­ac­ing the party; how­ever, the illu­sion breaks when he is yanked into the water by the monster.

Roy II dives in the water to attack the mon­ster, free­ing Mil­ton, but is grabbed and eaten. Mil­ton swims to the other side where the treach­er­ous Nadja said a switch to drain the water was hid­den, but to no avail!

Gar­shak is grabbed and pulled in the water, but escapes and makes for the land­ing. He throws the glow­ing fire-beetle sacs into the water to dis­tract the mon­ster. He then draws his two-handed sword and con­tin­ues to fight the beast, land­ing wicked blows on  the thing’s eyes. He is grabbed yet again, but uses his great strength to escape sure death a sec­ond time.

Mean­while, Mil­ton has dived to the bot­tom and finds a mys­te­ri­ous fold­box that just keeps unfold­ing and unfold­ing as he opens it. He escapes with the won­drous box while the mon­ster dines on poor Grom, and the two sur­vivors head for the stairs. The wounded Tim and the cop­per coins they left at the foot of the stair are miss­ing! So they make for the surface.

As they emerge from the dun­geon, the car­a­van arrives. The­rion, Hamza, and the two sur­vivors inspect the fold­box and dis­cover a fine longsword and dag­ger, a ring, and four spell scrolls. It is decided to rest, then go back down with six vol­un­teers from Hamza’s guard force to find Tim, clear the dun­geon and bring The­rion back any arcane books or magic items they find.

What awaits them down below? Where are the wounded Tim and the cop­per pieces? And what of Nadia, the treach­er­ous thief?

Our heroes will find out…