Well, another week, another D&D Session. Exactly how life should be running. I’m proud to start in on another series of posts that will bring you the adventures of our still nameless party. This time audio-enabled since I totally recorded during the session, and audio is fun! Excuse any fails in audio quality, as this was recorded with a simple laptop built in mic.

Previous Sessions: New Years – [1] [2] [3] [4] [TR] [Q]

The Cast

Marl Stone

Female Longclaw Shifter Barbarian.
Short on thoughts, eager for a fight.
Played by Kelly “Kitsu” P.

Yari Underglen

Male halfling Runepreist.
The guy who’s stuck holding the leash.
Played by Wiley “Rasp” A.

Miri

Female Human Witch (Wizard class).
The common sense that takes over sometimes.
Played by Cyrstal “Sarafina” M.

Dungeon Master

Paul “Vago” P. brings us his take on a WoTC module.

The Adventure

 

Wiley Sums up the Adventure So Far (Audio)

 

The party proceeds from the manor and heads shopping. They fail in procuring horses but do manage to add trail rations and a climbing kit to their gear. From their, they try and track down the spy, who Yari decides should be referred to from here on out as “The Mark”.

 

The “Mark” conversation (Audio)

 

We first head to the temple in the place, trying to find the priest. It turns out to be a Preistess called Lenora, who is out in the fields where we’re unable to track her down, despite attempting to follow the signs from Avandra and the like.

We try a number of attempts, and it takes awhile to end up bring out the place to go: We need up learning of Ilean, an old man who lives out on a farm outside the city along the King’s Road. We eventually reach the king’s road and find the third farm along it. In the field, there’s an old man weeding crops.

The old man, Ilean, eventually points us towards the Burial Site and gives us directions strait to them. We’ve been chasing rumors of Dovan Stahl, who went searching for a Dragon’s Tomb in the south. The party heads out, reaching a large crater in the ground. At the bottom are a group of humanoids around a black chasm in the ground. With them is a large dragon-like animal. The smallest of the humanoids, a gnome, calls out a hail when we approach. Marl, ever the optimist, waves back with a hearty “Hullo!”

Agrid* then proceeds to invite the party down to help him retrieve Stahl from the pit, where he claimed the man had fallen. When the party is halfway to them, Agrid yells “REX! Guard!” The big dragon-thing responds by snarling. Marl charges screaming through the first two humans while the others hang back a bit. The Gnome Agrid draws his crossbow and fires on her, missing. Suddenly, there’s a movement in the shadows and two huge shadowy hands well up from the earth to clasp Marl in their ethereal grip. These hands suck the joy of living from her. Rex charges into combat with Yari, who steps up to protect Miri. Through the battle the shadowy hands grab each member of the party in turn, vanishing anytime someone manages to kick free of their draining grasp. The shadow above the Crater’s rim keeps brining corpses back to live, sending Zombies against the party.

Eventually the party gets the upper hand, with Marl, Yari and Miri dropping the lesser Enemies. Agrid survives longer, but is eventually felled by Marl (even though at one point he ran away from her while she was grabbed and she threw her tankard at his head, connecting solidly). Agrid’s dying words, screamed over the crater, are “Kalarel, I have failed you!”

Thus the party converges on Kalarel, the Shadow, and quickly send him back to the realm of shadows (or wherever it was that he came from). The party then begins to move around the crater, looting and pillaging the meager belongings of the enemy band.

LOOT: A small wooden crate containing a relic from a dragon’s horde (worth 550 gp), A +1 amulet of health with a woman’s picture inside of it, 65 gold, and 13 silver.

As the party finishes looting, they notice one of the blankets on a moth-eaten bedroll twitch. . . Tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion of this week’s adventure!

* The characters never actually found out the Gnome’s name. The DM was kind enough to give me the name for purposes of this writeup. Thanks Paul!