Dungeons and Dragons (Part 5)

Today we played Dungeons and Dragons and everyone was there!

So, when last we left off, the party was heading back to the town of Tek.  Dungeon Master Boyle backtracked a bit for the purposes of roleplaying, and so Ranger Stephen guided them over the desert, ensuring that they made the crossing without any difficulty.  On the way, Becky and Steven asked if Becky could join the Party, and the party allowed for it. 

Returning to the residence of the mayor, the party presented the 19 gnoll heads that they recovered, particularly the white one of the Gnoll Spellcaster, who Ranger Steven confirmed had been the source of the creation of the gnolls.  The mayor rewarded them with 2000 gold. 

Then the part set about splitting up all the loot.  The bard kept the awesome lute, as well as the Gauntlets of Ogre Power.  He magnanimously gave the goggles of darkvision to Dragon Man, the only party member for whom such a feat was not innate, and they split the scrolls of cure wounds between them, as they are the only party members who could cast such spells.  Ulfgar took the Wand of Frost, which allows him cast Ray of Frost as many times as he wants.  However, its boost to ice spells is of little use to him, as he possesses no ice spells.  He also hung on to the jewelry the party discovered, since they can’t sell any of that in Tek.  The party returned the lightning bow to Becky, as they figured they should endeavor to keep her family on their good side.

As it happened, Becky’s mother was not allowing for Becky to go off adventuring with the party, so she became stuck training further with her father (which was probably for the best).  Ulfgar asked if there was any way in which the information of Steven’s monster manual could be passed along to them, and Steven stated that he would have Becky recopy it over the next month as a part of her training, and if they returned this way one month from now a copy would be waiting for them.  Ulfgar thanked Steven for this boon and resolved to return after such a time. 

Nory at this time requested that they be allowed to rest and recuperate for 5 days in Tek, which the rest of the party agreed to.  During this time, Nory recopied his book of Dark Eldritch Arcana, and presented the copy to Becky, evangelizing to her of the greatness of Cthulu and the certainty of his eventual awakening, and Becky was quite enthusiastic to learn of this.  (This is probably not for the best.) 

The rest of the party purchased various minor supplies during this time, and then after five days they left Tek, heading west towards the city of Sana Bell.  On the way, they saw smoke rising in the distance, a sign they took as ominous.  The Battle Bard, with his doubled strength, used his sweet lute to cast flight upon Ulfgar, and the dwarf flew off to see what the deal was.

And it was Orcs!  Nasty filthy Orcs, eight of them, were raiding a small village on the outskirts of Tek!  Ulfgar flew backs a ways to his party, informed them of the situation and to make haste to battle, then flew back to make battle as quickly as he could. 

Ulfgar set off a pair of firebolts before the rest of the party arrived, and got hit by a pair of javelins for his troubles.  When his party arrived, they went to war with the Orcs, and very quickly the party started taking on damage in a manner they hadn’t in the past.  The Bard, for all his new found strength, turned out to still have a bit of a glass jaw, and soon went down for the count.  Henk did some serious Tanking as well. 

Perhaps it was finally winning a convert to Cthulu putting a bit of pep in his step, but for whatever reason Nory started kicking ass like he hadn’t ever before.  The party might well of fallen if it had not been for his cunning strategic use of his Dark Arts, especially once a powerful Orc Chief arose from a barn, flipping a coin and bellowing in joy at the prospect of killing the party. 

After a long, drawn out skirmish, a mixture of attacks from Dragon Man and Hank, plus a series of scorching rays from the still flying Ulfgar, managed to weakened the Orc Chief sufficiently that his last remaining underling turned on him and beheaded him, so that at least as he died he could die as the Chief of his Orc tribe. 

The party put out the fires and looted the Orc bodies.  Ulfgar used the Wand of Frost to put out the fires lit in the huts, and then piled up the ransacked Orc corpses and firebolted them into a blaze.  He and Battle Bard tried various magical and diplomatic means to learn from where the Orc had come, and got answers ranging from ‘nowhere’ to ‘everywhere,’ and decided that peasants are stupid (as are their livestock).  While the Battle Bard was walking around, Nory’s familiar, who had flown off on his own, retrieved the Orc Chief’s coin and made sure it fell into the Bard’s hands.  Wouldn’t you know it, the coin turned about to be sacred to Cthulu!  (Not that the Orc Chief knew this: at least that’s what the familiar told Nory.)

The party elected to spend the night in the village, since everyone was pretty much spent after that battle, and headed out in the morning.  The rest of their journey to Sana Bell was uneventful, until they reached Sana Bell’s gates.  There, they met a guard who knew Henk, a human named Jean who claimed they served together under King Acron Lionheart, an employment that ended at the time of King Acron’s assassination.  Jean then related that King Acron had been killed by a Drow, one who matched, when Jean described him, the appearance of the Drow that the party had passed several weeks ago, a fact that Dragon Man then baldly stated, because Dragon Man has no tack.

Ulfgar tried to sweet talk Jean the guard, to befriend him and allow them to pass into the town, but when Henk mentioned that they were a party of adventurers, Jean became unreasonably hostile, and refused to grant the party entrance to Sana Bell.  Ulfgar tried pointing out that he was, in fact, a member of the illustrious Orebreaker clan, but Jean insolently refused to take the high born dwarf at his word.  The nerve!  Ulfgar then offered to bribe the idiot guard, to the tune of one gold coin, and only one gold coin, because that was all a loser like Jean was worth.  When Jean refused, the party left the gate, with Ulfgar seething, and began to travel around the town. 

The party quickly came upon another gate, and gained entrance at that one.  The guard there let them know that Jean was new, and everyone hated him, and when it was mentioned that one of the party was Dragon Man, it was revealed that Dragon Man was, in fact, a kind of folk hero in the area, his deeds of violence and slaughter in years past having over time transmogrified into folk tales of daring do. 

The party entered the city, with word spreading of the appearance of Dragon Man, and Battle Bard took the opportunity to go about singing songs of his companion, to further sauce the city for their residence.  The party gained rooms at the finer of the two inns in Sana Bell, and made many purchases (such as more healing potions).  Ulfgar sat down to a fine meal, speaking with Henk about his time as a king’s guard, a subject Henk was quite reticent to engage in.  While, Dragon Man entertained the townsfolk at the bar, Nory sneaked off, bought some canvas, and made a makeshift sign to preach of the glories of Cthulu to the children of the city. 

While Nory was doing this, Jean came into the bar.  Dragon Man and Ulfgar eyed him angrily, still holding a grudge, until finally Dragon Man started something, and Ulfgar joined in.  It turned out Jean hated adventurers because one slept with his wife one time, so Ulfgar congratulated Jean’s wife for making such a sensible decision, so Jean charged Ulfgar and yanked.  At. His.  Beard. 

Ulfgar pushed the vile cretin away as Dragon Man punched him in the face.  A short fight broke out, but almost as soon as it began, Jean had a heart attack.  Ulfgar walked by and got off one final insult before the obviously horrible person expired.  And the townspeople lifted his body up and threw it out into the street.  They surely weren’t going to blame the death on Dragon Man!

Ulfgar went back to his meal, feeling a little bad about all that, but not that bad.  You just don’t pull a dwarf’s beard. 

Around this time, as the body of Jean was being thrown out into the street, the Battle Bard showed up and found Nory preaching about Cthulu in the street.  Entering the bar, Ulfgar, who had never heard of Cthulu, was unconcerned, but Henk went outside, where he saw the little Cthulu familiar of Nory’s and thought it was just adorable!  He joined in making little Cthulu masks with the children.  Eventually, Henk asked if there was some literature about Cthulu that he could read, and Nory became incredibly defensive and closed up shop. 

Ulfgar finished eating and went up to bed, hardly realizing how quickly and surely his party members were being tempted by Ineluctable Darkness and Evil. 

He slept all right. 

Dungeons and Dragons (Part 4)

So, on Thursday, in a make up session for the previous Sunday that got canceled because someone had a party he just had to go to in honor of what would have been his grandparents 75^th Anniversary that allowed him to reconnect with family he hadn’t seen in over half a decade, we played DnD!

When we last left our heroes they had just reached a cliff face and were taking a short rest before heading off to find and kill a horde of gnolls.  Suddenly and inexplicably, and yet in perfect attunement with his character, Dragon Man purloined the magic riddle ball that Ulfgar had stolen earlier in the day, and decided he wanted nothing more than to sit there and play with it.  (Out of Game: Harper didn’t show.)

The rest of the party decided to just get on with it, and started exploring the forest after resting in the underside of the cliffs.

Coming to a log across a river with alligators in it, the party sent across the Bard with a rope, which allowed Nory, Becky, and Ulfgar to across over easily as Henk held the other end taught.  Then Henk attempted to cross without benefit of the rope, but fell in!  But as that rope was tied about him, the party was able to pull him back onto the log, and Henk climbed the rest of the way to safety.  The alligators didn’t get him! 

 They found, shortly thereafter, a temple, but less of a temple than a fancy fortified fortress, with towers at each of the four corners, and gnolls pacing along the front on guard.  Cautious that there might be reinforcements waiting within should these exterior gnolls come under attack, the party opted to attempt a more discrete entrance, and sent the Thoroughly Useless Bard off to investigate.  The Bard found a sewage grating.  He returned with the party, who collectively managed to pry the grating loose and begin traveling up the drain.  Coming into an open sewer beneath a system of latrines, the party discovered the corpse, not of a gnoll, but of a small goblin!  Confused as to his presence, Ulfgar turned the body over, finding it partially digested.  However, due to the overwhelming stench of the place, he failed to notice the enormous carnivorous slug directly above him, and was immediately attacked. 

After the party did away with the slug, they found an ancient dwarven pendant made of diamonds and gold.  Unfortunately, the latrines were too thin for most of the party to fit through, so they had to turn back the way they had come. 

The grate being a bust for entrance, the party decided to get on with it and attack the front entrance.  Utilizing a pincer attack, with Ulfgar and Nory standing at angles to either side to prevent escape and the melee fighters rushing into combat, the party made short work of the guards, and were happy to see the arrival of zero reinforcements.  Stupid gnolls.

The party found the giant front doors of the temple unguarded, and entered.  Fighting off some hyenas in the front room and on the first floor of the tower located to their left, they made their way to the second (and last) floor of the tower, and took a short rest to recuperate.  While resting, Henk found an ok longsword remaining in what used to be the room’s armory. 

Heading back down, a little refreshed, they entered the tower on the right.  There, they found a human statue defaced with a gnoll head, the distant sound of laughter, and some writing along the bottom.  When Ulfgar tried reading it, it turned out to be mystic ruins! And Henk and Useless Bard fell to the ground laughing!  Leaving only Ulfgar (on his last spells), Nory (not exactly rolling the best), and Becky the Wonder Girl (a 0-level character) on their feet! 

A trio of gnolls scampered down the stairs and, finding Henk collapsed at the foot of them, followed gnoll nature and immediately started attacking him while he was down.  (Good Tanking, Hank.  Good Tanking.)  That left Ulfgar and Nory free to hurl spells at the gnolls until Useless Bard and Henk could get to their feet. 

By the end of the fight, while the gnolls lay headless upon the ground, (the sacks the party carried for gnoll heads were neigh fit for bursting), most of the party’s spells were cast and, as it was late, the party opted to bed down in the second floor of the tower they had taken a short rest in. 

But it was not to be!  During Nory’s shift, a horde of gnolls burst in and started attacking the party!  Including the lightning firer from the night before!  Revealed, not to be Becky the Wonder Girl’s father, but a gnoll in dark vision goggles innately capable of great speed! 

The fight was not going well.  Quickly, Becky was dying on the floor, and Nory was on his last legs.  But, once the the melee gnolls had been taken care of, Ulfgar was able to get off his last two Scorching Rays on the Archer, allowing Henk the Severely Depleted Tank and the Useless Bard to finish him off with the aid of the Useless Bard’s invisibility spells.  While they finished him off, Nory did his Nory thing and coaxed Becky back from the edge with sweet nothings of the Unfathomable Terrors Waiting on the Edge of Madness, and Becky returned to the land of the living perky and quick. 

Upon the Archer Gnoll they found a magic bow that fired electricity and a pair of goggles of dark vision.  The Bard took the goggles; the Tank took the bow.

Now, with Nory a hop away from joining Becky down and out, and Becky not ever being too far from the edge herself, and Henk having been thoroughly a Tank throughout the now many encounters, the party was looking pretty rough, and Ulfgar, lawful good as he is, suggested a tactical retreat to the woods, as one more attempted long rest getting interrupted may well have meant curtains for some of the party.  The Useless Bard argued for further investigation, and so cast invisibility on himself, and went off to scout the rest of the castle. 

On his travel, the Useless Bard discovered a library, a room full of bats, a pathway into dungeons, and a pair of magical white gloves that suddenly all but doubled his strength.  Returning to the party with the confidence of a Bajah Blast addict, the Bard related the contents of his search (forgetting to mention the sweet gloves) and proclaimed that the party should once again attempt to rest here for the night, as there were no gnolls left above ground. 

Ulfgar, being that kind of cautious bred by innumerable generations of nobility, the kind that keeps the commerce flowing and your friends living, suggested they once again make way for the woods, as they had no idea what calamities might await them in the dungeons below, or what could come from out of them while they rested. 

Ulgar and the suddenly impertinent peasant Bard argued about this, then argued some more, while Nory and Henk, I don’t know, stared at the walls and drooled or something.  They argued so long, that the gnolls that were sleeping in the part of the temple that the hopped up yet STILL THOROUGHLY USELESS BARD HAD FAILED TO SEARCH woke up and headed off into the woods.  This lead to even more arguing between the obviously right whycantyouallseethat dwarf and the no-good-pinheaded-whywontyoulistentoreason Bard, until the gnolls actually returned, the worse for wear and covered in scorch marks.  (‘Uh oh’, thought Nory, who was the first to put together what this meant.)

The gnolls were holding court in the courtyard below, so, the party, who couldn’t actually deal with much hand to hand combat now, opted to rain spells and lighting bow blasts down on them from above, with the Bard guarding the way up with Henk’s new longsword. 

Due to the element of surprise and the benefits of ranged attacks from above, plus the Bard’s new found ability to kick ass in melee, the Party bested the worse-for-wear gnolls without taking on any casualties.  It was here that Nory pointed out that the gnolls had probably encountered Dragon Man, and, well, they had returned.  So. 

As he was really the only party member still standing, the party sent the Bard off to find Dragon Man while they nursed their wounds.  Traveling back to the log they originally traversed, the Bard found Dragon Man in bad shape, but was able to stabilize his condition, proving himself to finally be, a Useful Bard. 

Returning to the party, they, finally confident that there weren’t, in fact, more gnolls waiting in the wings, went up to the tower and bedded down for the night. 

In the morning, fully refreshed, the party did some more exploring.  They played a huge organ located on the second floor of the entrance side, which revealed some Sweet Loot.  This organ playing failed to produce further monsters, so they party headed down into the dungeon. 

First, they found the latrines.  Then, a hallway from rooms.  Mostly, these were empty, but in one they found a cache of healing spells, which they gave to the Bard for the time being, and some gold.  In the final room, they found a path to a lower level of dungeon, and a defaced alter to good gods.  (Also, there was a dusty desk with a non-dusty spot matching the pendant found clutched in the hand of the half-eaten goblin.  So that’s where he got that from!) 

Here, Becky read from her father’s monster manual, that hyenas are often turned into gnolls by a master gnoll spellcaster, and the menace of the gnolls can really only be ended by killing this original magician.  Taking this into consideration, Ulfgar asked Becky to watch the entrance way, and come warn them if further gnoll reinforcements  came.  But really, he had a feeling now that maybe her dad was not coming home, and he didn’t want to bring the Widow Lynch home two corpses.  Plus, Becky was pretty useless in a fight. 

Down they went, into the second layer of Dungeon.  And there they found a forking path, passing along the sides of a solitary tomb.  And before the tomb stood a statue, and it was not defaced.  The Bard, who had only so recently stopped being useless, counseled fear, for whatever kept the gnolls from defacing this statues would surely be a danger to them.  At this, three spirits emerged as smoke from crevices of the statue, and stood guard at the tomb. 

It was at this point that Ulfgar remembered that gnolls are pretty rude dudes, and he was, in fact, a pretty good guy, with the blood of Gold Dragons coursing through his veins. 

He walked up to the spirits and said, what’s up?

The spirits explained that they were in fact super good guy guardian spirits.  Ulfgar explained that he was Ulfgar Orebreaker, of the Orebreaker Clan (perhaps you’ve heard of us), and was, in fact, also a super good guy, and was with his buddies here to Defeat Evil and Chew Bubble Gum, but they were all out of bubble gum, so maybe these awesome guardian spirits would like to show them where the bad guys were?

The Good Guy Guardian Spirits appreciated that Respectful Paraphrase In Honor of Rowdy Roddy Piper (RIP), and took the party straight to the evil Bad Guy Gnoll’s layer. 

That’s right.  Ulfgar is so high class that guardian spirits give him the guided tour.

The entrance to the Gnoll Boss’ layer was a hole in the wall, and it was cold inside.  In fact, it was ice-cold.  The Newly Buff Bard and Henk the Tank went down first, but slipped and fell on top of each other in the path that forked to the left, colliding in a pile of icicles.  Ulfgar, being a proper fire-loving, gold-dragon-descended dwarf, used his hand axe to help in grappling down the right-side corridor, while other two climbed back up and hurled themselves down that corridor, with Nory skating right behind them. 

They glided into a giant chamber covered in ice.  An Icy Gnoll Lord wielding a Magical Icicle Wand stood before them, with the ancient ranger Stephen Lynch held captive.  As the first of their party entered, The Gnoll Lord cast the seemingly ancient ranger in a giant block of ice, as if to save him for a sacrifice to his dark god, then turned to face our heroes. 

The party made some attacks that the Gnoll Lord seemed to merely shrug off.  Then, right as Ulfgar entered, being all careful and cautious, this Ice Maven unleashed a Cone of Coldness.  Despite being in the back, Ulfgar took the worst of it. (Perhaps because of his fiery nature?  Perhaps because he was the only to fail his saving throw?)  The Party continued attacking the Gnoll Lord, until Ulfgar, finding a clearing, cast Scorching Ray upon the Snowbeast.  Despite only two of the three bolts finding their mark, the Gnoll seemed to be disproportionately affected by the spell.  Realizing the danger posed by the short sorcerer, the Gnoll Lord focused his next attack Ulfgar, and it hit.

Ulfgar, for the first time in the adventure, was not looking so hot.  One more attack like that last one might well be the end of him.  ‘Oh, Bard who is not useless, I could surely use some inspiration right now,’ he called.  And the Bard, after making his own attack, granted such inspiration!

And with the aid of that inspiration, Ulfgar’s next Scorching Ray was the Scorching Ray to End All Scorching Rays, and the Icy Gnoll Lord fell in a blaze of fire.  [Out of Game:  I made all three attacks thanks to the inspiration D6 boosting my third attack above the threshold, allowing me to deal 25 damage, which doubled due to the Gnolls weakness to fire to 50 DAMAGE.  All told I did 70 damage over two rounds of combat, which is probably the high point of my entire life at this point.]

After that is was pretty much a cleanup operation.  Ulfgar used Burning Hands to melt the ice block Steven the Ancient Ranger was stuck in, and he was reunited with his daughter (who really wanted to keep his lightning bow).   The Loot consisted of the icicle wand, a magical instrument with five bonus spells a day (no really, Eric rolled for that somehow), and a whole bunch of gold. 

The Party left with the reunited Lynches, their new Magical Items, (well, the Bard’s new magical items, since he wanted to keep all of them), and nineteen Gnoll heads.  They picked up the recovering Dragon Man, made it back to their pack animals, traversed the desert, returned to the city and were rewarded for those Gnoll head to the tune of 1900 gold. 

But how will the party split that loot?  Will they let Dragon Man have any of it?  Will the Bard keep all the magic items because the other party members who could make use of them prefer to stare at walls and drool?  Tune in tomorrow, for a fun-filled extra-roleplaying edition of Dungeons and Dragons!  5th Edition, nerds!

Dungeons and Dragons (Part 3)

Yesterday we played DnD!  But I didn’t write up a summary because I fell asleep. 

So anyways, as the game began, the party was still in the city of Tek, preparing to roll out.  The Useless Bard went off to play music in the town square, and Nory the Gnome Warlock went off to summon a familiar.  He headed to a local temple, which had the kind of large Brazier he needed to complete the summoning.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party was eating breakfast, when they were brought a note from the mayor but a young child.  Ulfgar tipped the child with a single copper (much to the chagrin of the boy, who muttered that Ulfgar was a ‘cheap bastard’), then read the note to Henk and Dragon Man.  It was a summons! 

Completing their breakfast, they headed to the mayor’s office.  After their defeat of the bandits, and their refusal to run off with the chest of copper coins, the mayor trusted the adventuring party more than other adventuring parties.  He brought up the recent attacks by Gnolls upon the city, and mentioned that there was a fifty gold bounty on any Gnoll head.  But for the adventuring party, he was willing to offer 100 gold coins for every Gnoll head, and Ulfgar, speaking for the party, offered that at such rates the party would work to root out all the Gnolls living in the surrounding area.

To aid them in searching out these Gnolls, the mayor suggested they seek the aid of the old ranger known as Nightwing living on the edge of town.  Since the party doesn’t actually have anyone good at tracking, they decided that this was probably a good idea. 

The party quickly found the Useless Bard in the town square, then went looking for the Gnome Warlock.  Passing by a local religious temple, they heard the screams of the insane emanating from within.  A crowd of city folk was clustered about it, wondering what could be going on inside, but a helpful servant of the temple said it was nothing to worry about.  It was just a strange little gnome, praying. 

The party decided to wait. 

Inside, Nory finally summoned his familiar, which took the form of a tiny, adorable little bobble-headed Cthulu, a minion of the true Great One who slumbers deathless beneath the waves.  ‘Spread the word,’ it whispered.  ‘He is coming.’  Then it turned invisible. 

(Out of game, Boyle bought John an adorable Cthulu bubble-head figuring to represent his familiar.  It is pretty awesome.)

Nory exited the temple, and found his party waiting for him.  He didn’t say exactly what he had been up to in there, and the party didn’t ask, because gnomes, right?  What are you gonna do? 

Ulfgar filled in Nory and the Bard on what the Mayor had told them, and their new commission, and then the party headed out to the edge of town to meet Nightwing the Ranger. 

Unfortunately, when they arrived, they found not a older human male ranger, but two human females, arguing.  Dragon Man attempted to kick down the door, because he is Dragon Man, and then Ulgar knocked politely.  The party then learned from the two women, who turned out to be Nightwing’s wife and daughter, that Nightwing had set off into the woods a few days ago, but had not returned, and should have been back by now.  The daughter was planning on heading out to look for him, insisting she knew enough about rangering to find him, but her mother would not have it.  Ulfgar described the nature of their quest, and why they had sought out Nightwing, and offered to bring the daughter with them and look after her, and hopefully, with her own ranger skills, she could help them track the Gnolls! 

The daughter’s name was Becky.  Becky was not actually that good a ranger. 

The party set out in their wagon, hitching both the mule and Dragon Man’s draft horse to it, and hiding Dragon Man with the rest of the party in the back of the Wagon.  Their plan was to lie in wait for some of the gnolls to attack them, and they figured this was less likely to happen with a seven foot tall Dragonborn riding along beside them. 

While traveling, Becky took out a book of her father’s, labeled Monster Manual, and began to read to the party about Gnolls.  Dragon Man, who is a lawful neutral PALADIN, immediately began planning ways to kill her, so he could take her book.  (Perhaps the reason the good aligned members of the party don’t notice their Warlock is consorting with Dark Forces of Eternal Madness is that, next to their Paladin, he seems pretty harmless.)

Soon, the party came upon an overturned cart, being scavenged by hyenas.  The party rode up and jumped out to fight them off, and two of the hyenas turned into gnolls and picked up dropped weapons to attack them.  And then a massive hyena emerged from behind the cart!

The party, of course, kicked their asses.  Becky was pretty useless, but not as useless as when the Bard tried using his awesome new spell Thunderwave.  (Ulfgar’s Scorching Ray was also a bit of a bust.)

The party cut the heads off the hyenas and Gnolls, then set Becky to work trying to strip and cook one of the hyenas.  They found nothing much of value in the overturned cart, except 12 unbroken glass vials and the boxes used to carry the remaining broken vials.  They turned the cart over, cleaned out the broken vials, and stored the heads in one of the boxes.  Dragon Man hooked his horse up to the cart, proclaiming that the cart was his now. 

They moved off the road and began hiding their carts, when they heard the sound of hoof beats and bells coming down the road from the direction of Sana Bell.  Heading out into the road, Dragon Man strode into the center, and suddenly a covered wagon appeared, drawn by what appeared to be a Unicorn (but was later revealed itself to be a white horse with a fake horn attached to its bridle.)  The driver was a famous gnome illusionist, who traded in magical trinkets!  Dragon Man offered to trade him the giant Hyena head for something, and the gnome offered some kind of necklace, that made the wearer feel cold. To test it, he asked Ulfgar to hurl a firebolt at him.  Ulfgar did.  The firebolt did 4 points of damage.  Angry that the cold necklace didn’t do what he wanted, Dragon Man stated that he wouldn’t trade the Hyena head for it, but the Gnome Illusionist insisted that the trade was already made, and all trades were final.  Dragon Man threw the necklace back into the Covered Wagon, and then tried to attack the Gnome, but the Gnome played with his head, made it look like Henk The Tank had a Hyena head, and Dragon Man tried attacking Henk.  Ulfgar wanted no part of this and walked to the back of the cart to get out of the way.  A little annoyed by the shiftiness of the gnome, who seemed to have cheated them out of the Hyena Head for a useless bauble, Ulfgar looked into the back of the cart, and nicked the first thing he could see.  He then ran off of their cart to hide it, and on the way, remembered that there was a magical mechanical fish hidden there.  Meanwhile, the Useless Bard inexplicably managed to resolve the situation with Dragon Man and Henk by casting Tasha’s Hideous Laughter on Dragon Man, causing him to fall over laughing before he could attack Henk.  Ulfgar ran back up with the Mechanical Fish, and asked if there were any useful items they could trade this for.  The Gnome offered a lantern whose light revealed that which was invisible, and Ulfgar accepted the trade.  The lantern revealed that there had been a half-ogre in the Gnome’s Wagon the entire time, which gave Ulfgar a bit of fright (apparently he hadn’t seen Ulfgar nick the bauble, as he was facing the other way), and the party saw Nory’s familiar for the first time, but mostly ignored it.

The gnome then headed out on his way, as Ulfgar suggested it would be a good idea to leave before Tasha’s Hideous Laughter wore off on Dragon Man.  Coming too, Dragon Man apologized to Henk for trying to attack him, and Henk was like, ‘it ain’t no thing’. Ulfgar showed the bauble he had stolen to the party.  Unwrapping it from the cloth it was in, it turned out to be a black orb with a question mark on it, the dot of which was a button.  Press the button, and a voice asked a riddle.  If you gave a wrong answer it said so, and a right answer for a ‘Correct!’  Nothing happened if you got the correct answer.  It just seemed to be a riddle asking toy.  Checking his pockets, Dragon Man found that the necklace, which they had thought was thrown away back into the cart, had reappeared in his pocket.  They later determined that the necklace, though making the wearer feel cold, actually protected you from the elements. 

As it was getting late at night, party hunkered down, and ate the hyena meat that Becky had taken forever to prepare.  They set watched, and during Nory’s watch, the second, they were attacked, with Nory alerting the rest of the party by screaming in pain after two electrical arrows nailed him in the chest. 

This battle did not go as well as the previous one.  Nory quickly hid underneath the wagon as Gnolls showed up, and the Melee people went off to fight them.  Ulfgar started hurling firebolts into the night, to try to scare people off, then went out to look for the person firing electric arrows.  Becky, who assumed these Electric Arrows belonged to her father, began calling out for him, and was quickly felled by them.  Nory noticed her lying limp from under the cart, and having been healed a bit by the Bard, was able to stabilize her.  In the middle of the melee fight, The bard eventually fell, but only after Dragon Man had joined Ulfgar in looking for the archer, leaving the two fallen people without a method of being revived.  Henk, like a boss, took out the last of the gnolls in the camp, then found a healing potion on the Bard and fed it to him.  Revived, the Bard was able to save Becky.  Ulfgar eventually found a trail through the tall grass they were in that lead off from the encampment, and guessed that the archer, who had moved about the encampment at seemingly impossible speeds, had fled.  He returned to the party, relating what he had seen. 

The party bunkered down again for the night, sleeping between the wagons.  In the morning, fully healed, they headed out with their animals to follow the trail left by the archer, who appeared to have been using Becky’s father’s bow.  Eventually, the savannah they were in turned to desert, and they ran out of water, and members of the party began dropping like flies and being set upon the pack animals, who carried on like champs.  Dragon Man was also fine, what with his totally useless Necklace that protect you from the elements. 

Eventually, they reached a cliff face, where at one point the Bard had seen figures in the distance heading towards.  Reaching the cliff, they finally found a new source of water, and took an hour to rest and recuperate, not knowing what new danger they were about to head into. 

Here the session ended.