Slain by Elf

'Before you even get to the junction, you hear a banging and a horse shouting.'

'... what's it shouting?'

We vanquish a necromancer who made his home inside some barrows and was using the reanimated corpses of a nearby ex-village as labour.

Barely has his cold body hit the floor when a phantom of dark swirling mist rises up from the Necromancer's corpse and addresses us. 'My Lord, Ehalazuhn, wishes to recognise your great efforts and asks you not to heed the lies spread about him by unbelievers.'

''Recognise our efforts'? Excellent, it sounds like we will be knights again!'

'Deathknights, maybe.'

'Either way, people will call me sir.'

'There is a lantern ahead, a couple of miles away.'

'We shall go to investigate the latern.'

'So you're heading towards the light.'

'Stop making it sound so ominous.'

The spell 'Obscure Object' is ineffective against the Hipster.

Wyvern attack! We could be in trouble as it swoops down to rake us with its claws before climbing back out of range. But Pasha helps us out, casting a spell that blinds the creature.

Now that it can't see us, the Wyvern can do little but flap around. Sadly, it doesn't land as Pasha expects, but climbs in the air and flies in tight circles, trying its best to stay out of harm's way.

The Wyvern is almost out of trouble, but it is just at the optimal range of our bows, if we stand right underneath it. So that's what we do, we move underneath the Wyvern and start pinging it from below.

It seems like such a good idea, right until one of us deals the final, killing blow, and the Wyvern stops flapping its wings. At that point, we realise that maybe we shouldn't be standing directly underneath it after all.

Have we found everything of value? How can we know, until someone casts Detect Magic? Pasha goes above and beyond the call of duty, not only casting the spell but making sonar noises as he searches for magic, 'Bing! Bing! Bing!', until I throw his pencil out of the room.

We find a couple of magic items, and a gem nearby, which is a good result. The GM wants to know 'what else are you doing in this room?'

'Well, I binged for magic.'

'Probably would have got better results if you'd googled instead.'

Defeating the Bugbear slavers and their overseer, we are left with the excellent task of looking for loot. We find a chest. 'It's not locked', says the GM, but we're not naive adventurers.

'I'll check the chest for traps.'

Having the GM tell me, 'let's say it isn't trapped', doesn't fill me with confidence.

'Is it trapped?'

'It's not, and I don't want to have to spend 10 minutes digging through the rules for traps.'

'Okay, I open it.'

'...nothing happens.'

'It doesn't even open? You said it wasn't locked.'

Our dwarf companion lives from the previous encounter, and we press on with the excellent idea of rescuing all the dwarf slaves in the mine. We reach what looks like the main rock face, where a couple of dozen chained dwarves toil, watched over by Bugbears.

We find ourselves facing more Bugbears than there are us, and in a fairly big cavern. To help us gain some kind of advantage, Pasha prepares a spell. 'I'm going to cast Fog Cloud!'

'Okay, draw it on the map.'

'There.'

'What is its effect?'

'It's foggy.'

Collapsing a mine to halt production of an army's weapons is a fine plan, but having to make sure all of the dwarven slaves get out first is health and safety gone mad. There is a glimmer of hope that things can be made easier, though, when our dwarf ally and guide drops from a Bugbear attack.

'If the dwarf dies, we wouldn't have to rescue the slaves before we destroy the mine, would we?'

'Technically not, no.'

'Is that your plan now?', asks the GM.

'Our only regret is not thinking of it sooner.'

We have a ship! We also have a crew. This leads to squabbling over who should be captain, which takes most of the day.

Eventually, seeing the crew standing around in stunned disbelief, I simply shout out something that sounds captainy. 'Ready for sail!'

'Hey, who made you captain?'

'No one, but maybe you'd like to be first mate?'

'Okay. That makes Pasha the cabin boy.'

'That's not fair. I want to be Worf!'

'That works for me. Set sail, shipmates, and leave the wharf behind us!'