Slain by Elf

Skeletons! Thousands of them! Don't shoot till you see the whites of their eyes, lads.

Well, 20 skeletons, but that seems like plenty when they charge us. Salvador takes down a couple that get close to him, using his combat reflexes and reach weapon. Most of the rest are despatched by our clerics, 13 blown to dust by channelling positive energy their way.

'Now it's my turn', says Thrak, countercharging the few that remain. 'Time to blood my weapon!'

I don't think Thrak understands the concept of skeletons.

We spend the night camping on a small patch of land in the middle of a swamp. Well, some of the night. We're interrupted by the approach of a boat carrying some hostile tieflings, singing a melody that lures a few of us in to the water.

As it turns out, being lured away from the camp is not such a bad thing, given that those who resist the enchantment are then caught by a following web spell, which is itself swiftly followed by a stinking cloud.

Salvador is caught by both the web and the stink, and struggles to get free. The stinking cloud restricts his actions, and the web restricts his movements. Aggar and Thrak are lucky in getting free of the web quickly, and able to move out of the stinking cloud.

Being free of the effects, Thrak offers his advice to Salvador. 'Light a torch and burn the web away!' ...in a swamp, when it's raining, and whilst he's actually trapped in the web. Thrak should stick to fighting.

Thrak sticks to fighting, but more shadow boxing than real, damage-inflicting fighting. As it turns out, despite Salvador being choked whilst uncomfortably bound—a normal Tuesday night for him—and taking the whole fight to break free, it is his initial strength-sapping spell that helps the most and his summoned creature that does the most damage. It was a weird fight.

'Reflex saves, my worst check!' Even so, Aggar rolls rather well, getting a natural 19 on the D20.

This excellent virtual display of dexterity is only marred by Aggar then somehow managing to throw the dice in to his own face when trying to pick it up.

Our plan to stop the singing almost works. Sure, we appear to be accomplices in the murder of a dryad, but you can't make an omelette without breaking any eggs. Besides, one of the Seela continues to sing.

Salvador leaps in to action! He dashes forwards and, not distracted by any nearby defenceless animals, casts colour spray on the stubborn Seela. It works! The Seela is stunned in to submission, the song stops, and, well, the whole forest is consumed by an almighty fireball, as our instigator transforms in to a black, tentacled creature and vanishes.

The Seela turn to ash, their remains crumbling to the ground. The trees turn to ash, crumbling to the ground. There are no signs or sounds of wildlife, the nymph we visited earlier is gone. Everything in the forest that was living, flora or fauna, is now ash. They're all dead, Dave. And it's all Salvador's fault.

This is really taking Salvador's instincts to murder innocent fluffy critters to a new level, taking out a few bystanders—and a whole forest, I suppose—with them, but at least he's consistent.

There's not much to do but move on, really. We head through the fire forest—well, it's neither on fire nor a forest any more, more of an ash plain—towards our destination. After a long while of relatively uneventful travelling we reach a shanty town on the edge of some expansive marshland.

There are refugees outside of the shanty town, and inside are traders selling boats for crossing the swamps at vastly increased prices. The locals are clearly exploiting the plight of the refugees fleeing the Ragesian army for their own gain.

'Hey, Salvador. After destroying an entire forest, how do you fancy creating another major ecological disaster and drying out the swamp? This time, it could actually be beneficial!'

'If we used detect magic', says Salvador, 'would the hair detect as magic?'

'Call me a stickler, but I think you'll actually have to cast detect magic to get your answer, otherwise that's cheating, chum.'

'We don't need to kill them to stop their singing, we only have to cut their tongues out.'

So says our duskblade, the same duskblade who was quite upset about making a deal with a devil. Presumably because he didn't want the competition.

'Hey, if the gnome stepped up, you'd then be flanking the devil and get the bonus to attacks.'

'Naw, I'd need to threaten. When have I ever?'

The desperate measure is suggested because our duskblade is having trouble hitting the devil. Quite a bit of trouble. Knowing that the devil has a few damage reductions to overcome, and that electricity will bypass them, Salvador channels an electrical touch spell in to his blade. And misses.

Thankfully, the spell is not discharged on a miss, which lets Salvador swing again. And miss again.

And he misses again. And misses again. And again. His wild flailing gets to the point where he has to check the duration of the shocking grasp spell, just in case it dissipates naturally.

'Sal, next time you swing, shout "Pika-Pika". It'll help, trust me.'

'How did I just sort out my dice and end up with no D20s out?'

'It's okay, I don't think 3.5e D&D uses them much.'

Five minutes later, after a bit of rejigging. 'I've done it again. Two-dozen dice in front of me, and only one D20.'

'Yep, and two D12s, by the looks of it. And you're a cleric.'

Walking through the fire forest has its hazards. Apart from the fire, there are also the occasional clouds of ash and cinders blown down from the tree tops. They aren't too difficult to spot, though, and as we are walking alongside a river, we simply duck in to the stream to avoid the trouble.

On one occasion, however, we fail to spot a beastie amongst the ash. Thrak finds out first, as the monster lands on his him as our barbarian is under water avoiding the cloud, biting in to his neck. Thrak thankfully shrugs off the monster's grab and stands up to beat it away.

Thrak not only shrugs off the grapple, but also the effects of seeing this monster, which is a hideous sight indeed. Thrak strikes a solid blow against the flying, multi-legged, sabre-toothed beast.

Aggar gets up and sees the same monster, fighting with Thrak. He too is unaffected by the sight of whatever-it-is, and moves forward to thump it. It's another solid blow, enough to knock the creature bleeding to the ground.

The rest of us get out of the water, the ash cloud having passed us by harmlessly, rather oblivious to the threat of the beast. 'What's that rast doing on the bank?', I say, having knowledge of the planar monster.

'A rast? They can paralyse with a glance' says Salvador, also knowledgable of the monster. 'It's a good thing it's dead, as I wouldn't like to have to deal with a living one. Shall we press on?'

'I tried for diplomacy, and sucked balls.'

In case anyone's wondering, he's actually referring to the poor dice rolling that occurred in the previous session. I think.