Jon's 3E D&D Campaign

Key to Entries

Butt Kicking for Goodness

This is the original party, which is going through the "Adventure Path" series of modules.

W.A.A.N.G.

(We Ain't Afraid of No Goats -- formerly Takin' Care of Business.) This is the second party, which is going through a collection of adventures from Dungeon and other places.

Temple

This is the party which is going through Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil in the Forgotten Realms setting.

Chaos Brothers

This is a party which involves Ben and George (or Ben and Steve) each playing two brothers. It takes place in the Forgotten Realms.

Who's Who

Entries

Tuesday, January 30, 2001

The Speaker in Dreams, Part Three

It's time to finish the write-up of this adventure. The last installment featured Kalm, Aramil, Oderus and Elec.

The adventurers headed to The Reality Wrinkle. The proprietor wouldn't let them in the back room, so Elec snuck in there under the cloak of invisibility. Mistaking a signal from his familiar, the other adventurers ended up charging in there. After they wouldn't heed his calls to leave, he headed upstairs. Meanwhile, the adventurers opened a closet door and had to deal with a gibbering mouther, which was very disturbing to Kalm. While this was happening, a sorcerer from the alienist cabal housed there came down in response to the noise and the proprietor's plea for help. The characters made their way up the tower and confronted the cabal's leader, The Blessed. She summoned another wyste (the thing on the cover) to fight them, while causing them some difficulty by fighting them from the ceiling. But they eventually prevailed. They headed to the basement, where they fought two more sorcerers and another mouther. They freed Alein, the champion of Heironeous.

There was much rejoicing in the town. A celebration was held to mark the adventurers' victory. Aramil was particularly pleased by the new songs sung to commemorate the victory. Unfortunately, the joy was shortlived as a pack of deadly assassins tried to cut down the adventurers as they left the celebration. One by one, however, the assassins succumbed to the party's might.

The next morning, the Baron issued a proclamation. Because of the recent lawlessness, he said, he was imposing martial law on the town. The gates were shut, the fair was over, and the temple of Pelor was to be closed. Oderus rushed to the temple to get healed before the closing, but it was too late. Devils ruled the temple. The party worked its way through and cleared out the fiends.

There was only one place to turn to finish the struggle. Enlisting the aid of Alein and Torea, the party entered the baron's keep. They soon found themselves in combat against the baron and a mind flayer. The mind flayer stunned Alein and Kalm, and then attacked Alein while the baron attempted to hold off the others. The party managed to turn on and slay the mind flayer, but not before it sucked out Alein's brain. Freed of the illithid's influence, the baron regained his senses and the battle ended. Oderus donated money to assist with Alein's raising.

Now the real celebration began. The fair re-opened and the party was celebrated as the town's rescuers.
posted by Jon Grantham 8:15 PM

Thursday, January 18, 2001

The Speaker in Dreams, Part Two

This is the real cover. Since the characters ended up hitting this part of the adventure, I can show it.

The characters continued up the bell tower. Kalm stepped on a trap that drained him (temporarily) of a couple of levels. Ouch. Then they came to a room full of dire rats. Each round, more kept coming in. But with Aramil's sound burst and many whacks from Kalm's chain, they killed all ten. Searching the room, they found Elec Mournbringer, Mickey's wizard, who had been taken captive by the wizards. Freeing them, they continued upwards.

They came to the room fulled with the ropes and pulleys that controlled the bells. Three wererats stood on beams twenty feet above. Elec hypnotized a couple, while Oderus climbed up to face them. Kalm brought down their leader with javelins before he could succesfully read his summon monster II scroll.

At the very top of the tower, they came across two gargoyles posing as statues. A fireball and Kalm's chain helped bring them down after Oderus' fists seemed to have no effect on them.

Asking around, the characters discovered reports of strange goings-on in the West Hill neighborhood. They travelled there, when

"For an instant, the very fabric of space seems to warp--distances stretch to infinity or close to nothing, straight lines warp and weave, and vertigo assaults your senses. In the eye of this insane storm, space opens up, and a pool of thick blue slime oozes out onto the street. As your vertigo subsides, a huge wormlike creature rises up from the pool. Its translucent, purplish skin reveals strands of pulsing organs beneath it, and a ring of hooked tentaclelike limbs surrounds a gaping lampreylike mouth."

Soon another such creature had joined the first. Oderus set one of them on fire with alchemist's fire, and it spent most of its time trying to put itself out. The other, shrugging off Elec's stinking cloud, severely wounded Kalm. Kalm enraged and finished off the two bizarre creatures with swings of his chain.

A bystander wondered where Alein, champion of Heironeous was, since she usually shows up to lend a hand at any trouble in West Hill. Heading to the temple, they found an obscuring mist surrounding it. Torea, the assistant champion, came running out and promptly was put to sleep. Kalm rushed up and immediately dispatched the two sorcerers who were trying to carry her off. She recognized one of the men as having been in the Reality Wrinkle bookstore when Alein and Torea recently investigated a suspicious death there.
posted by Jon Grantham 7:43 AM

Thursday, January 11, 2001

Evil Unearthed

After the characters made it to 2nd level in "Unearthing the Past" (I threw in an extra bad guy to make sure they did), it was time for "Evil Unearthed". The coincidence of names can be attributed to a lack of originality on the part of Wizards of the Coast, I guess. This adventure came from Dungeon #82. It was originally designed for 1st level characters, but the "Scaling the Adventure" sidebar suggested running it as written for 2nd level adventurers, and it turned out to be challenging enough.

TCOB was joined for this adventure by Mickey's elven monk, Bane. Biggen was, I believe, absent for this adventure.

The monk had received a letter from a bard and her husband inviting them to come join in Brookhollow, where they were exploring some interesting ruins. Upon arrival, the characters did not find the friends. Suspecting foul play, they discovered her journal, which indicated she had headed down to Log's Landing. They headed there and found an ambush had taken place. Eventually (I forget how), they found the Gray Mausoleum near the Temple of Valor. As it turned out, the so-called priest of Heironeous was really serving Hextor. In the Mausoleum they discovered this, as well as their "friends". After a while, the husband, not the adventuring type, grated on the nerves of the party, especially Blackjack.

But the party fought through skeletons, zombies, kobolds and more skeletons to free the bard. Zook was taken down in the final skeleton combat, so Blackjack and the monk had to go ambush the cleric themselves. Fortunately, they caught him by surprise, and without his armor he was hardly a match for them.
posted by Jon Grantham 7:19 PM

Wednesday, January 10, 2001

Unearthing the Past

While waiting for The Speaker in Dreams to come out, we wanted to keep playing. Since the existing characters needed to stay at the same level to be ready for that module, the players created a new set of characters. Steve created a halfling figher, Ben a dwarven cleric (later cleric/wizard), George a gnomish sorcerer, and Martin a human wizard (later cleric/wizard). Yes, it's the spellcasting party, but as it became known...TCOB.

The first adventure the characters went through was Unearthing the Past. The characters began in the town of Travensburg, where a critical food shipment had been delayed. The characters were sent out to investigate and came upon the wagon, which had been suffered an ambush. After defeating the orcs and sorcerer who were plundering the wagon, they followed tracks back to a cave.

In the cave, they battled orcs, a ghoul and a really nasty choker before coming face to face with the cleric who was stacking up the town's supplies. They killed him, returned the supplies, and were acclaimed as heroes.
posted by Jon Grantham 10:52 PM

Monday, January 08, 2001

The Speaker in Dreams, Part One

Note this actually isn't the cover from The Speaker in Dreams, the next adventure this party went through -- which is just as well, since the real cover gives away part of the adventure they haven't seen yet.

The party decided to head to the big city -- well, large town -- specifically, Brindinford, where they hoped to sell their loot from the previous adventure and potentially equip themselves for future ones. Dim was not around, but on the way there, they met Galvaro (Paul), a cleric of Fahrlanghn.

Upon arriving into town, they took care of needed transactions at the fair, but after a while there was a disturbance. Rushing to investigate, they found wererats and rats trashing the fairgrounds. They dispatched a couple of wererats and the rats, but a few of the wererats managed to elude them.

The heroes then went into the Southspur neighborhood, the scene of a number of recent grisly deaths. Trouble didn't take long to find them, as they came upon a group of grimlocks attacking some performers. After the death of the grimlocks (as well as a couple of passers-by who the grimlocks got to first), the party tracked the grimlocks to their warehouse lair.

Initially blinded by a darkness spell, the party jumped free of it, and dispatched three grimlocks, including one particularly tough grimlock assassin.

Returning to the fair to sell the loot from the grimlocks, the party was jumped by a couple of wererat toughs. The party slew them, and after asking around, tracked the rat menace to the town's bell tower.

Upon entering, they found the bell-ringer to be an old man. Under a charm person spell from Aramil, he revealed his wererat nature. The party considered curing him of his affliction, but after a detect evil spell revealed him to be evil, they decided to whack him on the head instead. Continuing up the tower, the party engaged in combat with more wererats...
posted by Jon Grantham 8:32 AM

Friday, January 05, 2001

The Forge of Fury

Having made it up to 3rd level in The Sunless Citadel, it was time to find The Forge of Fury. An ancient dwarven map found in the previous adventure led the party to seek out the treasure that could be hidden there.

The adventure featured generally the same party as last time. Unfortunately, Great Ulfe, the ogre who led the orcs in the first level of the dungeon, finished off Krud. So Krud was replaced by Kalm Iron Balls, an orc fighter/barbarian.

The Forge opened with a running battle with a group of orcs. The battle spanned several rooms, with orcs firing through arrow slits and generally being more strategic than one was used to. It was fairly exciting.

After clearing out the first level (the Mountain Door), the party headed down to the Glitterhame, a level of caverns. Stirges plauged them, and they learned the fun of ability drain through the stirges' Constitution damage.

The Glitterhame was also inhabited by troglodytes. The best trog encounter involved a couple of them who tried to get over and open up a timber gate. They were dispatched by the party before they could, so Aramil went over and opened it. Oops. The brown bear that jumped out almost killed him.

The central cavern of the Glitterhame featured some gricks, a new 3E monster. The gricks reached down to grab the players. This was potentially a very disastrous encounter, but they used their wand of entangle to hold back the gricks long enough to beat them back.

After a detour through the Sinkhole and a battle with a gray ooze, the party got the ncessary key to open the door to the Foundry level. The foundry was now inhabited by a band of duergar (gray dwarves). The duergar (especially their illusionist), animated furniture and undead formed the main challenges on this level.

Finally, they made it down to the final level, which was The Black Lake. The Black Lake seemed to be fairly gratuitous, except to provide Nightscale, a young black dragon, which would have been serious trouble for the party had Dim not cast a blindness spell which disoriented it.
posted by Jon Grantham 6:19 PM

The Sunless Citadel

The next adventure the party participated in was The Sunless Citadel. It was the first 3rd Edition adventure module put out by Wizards of the Coast, and it's the first in the Adventure Path of modules which they're designing to take characters from 1st level all the way up to 20th.

This adventure saw Steve replace El Esteban with Dim, a human cleric. That, along with Aramil's newfound healing abilities, helped the party survive the adventure.

Well, most of the party. The words "C'mon, let's play until I reach 3rd level," will live in infamy. Martin had departed for the evening, and Ben wanted to get Koop up to 3rd level. He never made it. He ran into the bugbear in the arboretum. The bugbear rolled two critical hits in a row and finished off poor Koop.

Koop was soon replaced by Krud, this time a full orc, this time a fighter.

The Sunless Citadel was a ruined fortress that had sunk into the earth. The players heard another party of adventurers had disappeared there and that there were goblin raids coming out of there.

They dived in and soon found themselves in the midst of a dispute between the kobolds and goblins living in the dungeon. They met with the leader of the kobolds and agreed to retrieve the kobolds' dragon from the goblins. Unfortunately for the kobolds, Meepo, the dragonkeeper died immediately upon meeting the goblins. The players, and Erky Timbers, the captive they rescued, ended up killing the goblins, the dragon (a white dragon wyrmling) and eventually the kobolds.

The final battle of the module, which neither Wizards of the Coast or I explained very well, was with an evil druid who was cultivating an evil tree. After a hard-fought battle, they defeated the druid and the adventurers who were now under his control and then burned down the tree.

The adventure wasn't quite finished, however, as on their way out, they found the "tomb of a failed dragonpriest". "He mucked with magic the dragoncult deemed profane--he shaped himself from elf to troll. For this crime, the cult entombed him alive, though the honor of his station remained." The 42 hp troll took a long time to take down -- and boy were they startled when it jumped up again and started attacking them. Fire finally did the trick.
posted by Jon Grantham 7:59 AM