Slain by Elf

We are ambushed on our way out of the underground dungeon by the druid we suspected to find inside the dungeon. Damn him and his alarms that we tripped. Amidst the storms, whilst we try to swim in the shallow sea, the druid attacks, calling to his aid a pair of gargoyles and a squid. No releasing the kraken, though.

Thrak acts, and wants to know if one target is better than the others for his traits and skills. 'Has this gargoyle damaged anyone yet?'

'Yes.'

'Who?'

'You. In the previous round. Which was, in fact, the first round of combat.' I think we're all going to die. And battling creatures that can swim and move freely in stormy waters, whilst we struggle to doggy paddle to stay afloat, doesn't work too well for us.

Despite our best efforts, including a masterful illusion that brings the druid from his perch down in to the melee with us—who was to know he had a level of monk too?—Thrak gets knocked unconscious, as does Salvador soon afterwards.

We're not all down. And Salvador's best weapons are still with us. His huge summoned centipede bites in to the druidic monk, hitting for maximum damage! 'Are you sure that's the maximum damage?' he's asked. Salvador is sure, which is a shame, because that apparently leaves the druid on 1 hit point.

'Suicide your dog on him!'

'I'm going to.'

'Oh right. Look who I'm talking to.' Whether that was the plan all along, or only became the plan considering the circumstances, Salvador's blink dog charges from the dry perch, jumps down on to the druid, and gets a decent hit. The druid drops! Good doggy. Now let's get your minion back on his feet.

More by luck than judgment, we find the tomb of an almost-legendary pyromancer, thought to have been buried under the city but whose location has been long forgotten. Quite how we found it is more the mystery now.

The entrance to the tomb has runes marked on the wall, a warning of what will befall those who disturb the tomb. Thrak even somehow manages to find a magical trap on the door to the tomb. By searching for it, that is, not setting it off.

'Do we open the tomb? How do we open it?'

'Let's just open it, so that we can give the remains a decent burial', says Salvador.

'So we're breaking in to a tomb to give someone a burial. I suppose a tomb is a good place to do that', says Aggar, not having to strain too hard to uncover perhaps the flimsiest excuse for grave-robbing in history.

We've fought our way in to an underground bunker, and fought our way deeper in to the underground bunker. We are now bickering about whether or not we should venture through the curtain of magical darkness in the mouth of a dragon carved in to the stone wall, and, if we do, who goes first.

Balls to it. I open the door to our left instead. It's probably a toilet, and I need to go.

'Brewswain, that's not a toilet.'

'It soon will be.'

Gowan stands between us and the final jewel we need to open the main chamber. At least, it kinda looks a bit like Gowan, but he seems more dragony this time, with black scales all over his body and pupil-less eyes. He sounds just as much of a dick as usual, though.

We have to fight our way to get the jewel, in a room hazy with a mildly corrosive mist and puddles of acid splashed around. Gowan seems quite at home in this environment, however, giving him an advantage. At least, it's supposed to.

Gowan attacks Brick, swinging his weapon mightily down, looking good to hit our warrior. But the mist obscures Gowan slightly, and his axe just misses Brick. Gowan swings again with a second attack, also looking to score a decent hit on our comrade, but again the concealment afforded Brick by the mist causes Gowan to miss. I'm not sure Gowan can consider this his natural environment if it's actively hindering him.

The advantage of the room's concealing properties are more evident when Gowan manages to distract Toogood and disappear in to the mist. That's the point where Toogood has had enough, and decides to just go to the dais at the end of the room and snag the gem when Gowan is fooling around.

Toogood gets to the dais, his idea that this room is laid-out like the others looking good, and although the receptacle for the gem is there, the gem is not. A voice comes from the mist. 'Ha ha! Are you looking for this?'

'At least I know where you are now.'

'Ah. Uh, no you don't.'

Toogood is convinced of Gowan's continued arrogance more than his ventriloquist skills, an arrogance that makes Gowan jump in to a puddle of acid in frustration, daring us to follow. Curiously, he is not affected by the effects of the acid. But it's only curious because he walked around the puddle when he last tried to evade us.

'I was lulling you in to a false sense of—nope, I did actually forget I could walk freely through the acid.'

Needless to say, we defeat Gowan, recover the final gem, and head in to the final room.

Skeletons! Thousands of them! Wait till you see the whites of their eye sockets, lads. Moving through the flooded building where we were guided to find the centre of the storm ravaging the city, we find a room of cells that makes us realise the building used to be a gaol. But what we thought were rotting bodies of long-forgotten prisoners are actually animated skeletons, part of someone's cunning defences. I suppose the dead adventurer in the previous room should have tipped us off.

What can we remember about skeletons? I believe they're mindless, and so unaffected by mind-affecting spells. That's pretty logical. I flip through my spell book looking for something that would be effective, and remember that I'm an illusionist. I primarily cast illusions. Illusions are mind-affecting spells. That's neat.

Luckily we have a cleric in the party, one who specialises in turning undead. Another characteristic of skeletons is that they are undead. This is neater. Aggar calls forth his holy power and, with a word, disintegrates over half the skeletons in the flooded cells. He smugly waits another round, watching Thrak and Salvador try too hard to fight the undead whilst underwater that have advanced towards us, and calls upon his power again. The rest of the skeletons turn to dust in the water.

Now we can proceed. We head deeper in to the building, which looks like it means heading deeper in to the water. We have water-breathing potions, which we take, but Salvador's blink dog familiar forgot to bring one. Silly doggy. Salvador considers his options and decides that it's probably best to let his dog blink to the other plane for now, and recall him when it is safe to breathe again.

Sending his blink dog across planes opens a discussion as to what happens to the water around the creature when it blinks. Does it take any water with it to the other plane? If it blinks back to water in this plane does it displace the water, or does that water get sympathetically transferred to the plane the dog came from? And if the water does get transferred, would we be able to eventually reduce the water level by continually having the dog blink back-and-forth?

'I love this adventuring party. There's a major storm threatening to ravage the entire city, time is of the essence in dispersing it, and one plan is to wait for the blink dog to deplete the ocean.'

'From the other end of the room you see Gowan for the first time after he evaded you through the portal to this swamp, and he's changed since the last time you saw him.'

'Has he grown a moustache?'

'No, he's changed. He's out of his bone armour and in a smoking jacket and slippers.'

'Your lack of knowledge in arcana tells you that this rotting head of a black dragon has been lying here for a few weeks.'

'Our lack of knowledge tells us this? I should be ignorant in more subjects.'

'I was looking at my character sheet after levelling-up and thinking 'what have I done now?!''

A storm is blowing, gradually increasing in intensity, almost unnaturally so. The wind is blasting us, and we have a short bridge to cross where waves are intermittently crashing over it.

'One effect of Indominatability's Bane means we are not affected by the strong winds, but I'm not sure about waves.'

'Waves aren't wind, Thrak.'

'No no, let him work it out on his own.'

'I fear I have some grave news.'

<drum roll>

'Sal, you don't give a drum roll for grave news.'

'I know, but I didn't have a way to make a dun-dun-DUNNNN sound.'