Slain by Elf

'Maybe our Monkey Monk could help with that?'

'How long have I been in this party? My name isn't Monkey Monk! It's Monk Wahlberg.'

Delving down beneath the now-shattered stone desk leads us to a room with what look like coffins in them. And a vampire. And some vampire spawn. All looks pretty bleak, as we wonder who will be dominated by the undead monster, until he chooses our ranger as his target.

'Oh, okay. At least Afutavere won't be an additional threat when he fails his saving throw.' But he saves against the domination effect, and it's good that he does. It's not that the ranger would hurt us, but rather it turns out that he is the only one of us who can really harm the vampire.

The vampire has damage reduction except against silver and magic, where the attack must be made by a magical silver weapon to leave a lasting impression. Just magic or just silver won't do, as we find out. The paladin's ability to smite evil works for the limited times he can use it, but otherwise we only have magical weapons, or silver weapons. But not the ranger.

The ranger has a bunch of silver arrows, which when fired by his magical bow are also imbued with magical energy. Each attack strikes the vampire for its full damage, which combines with his hatred for undead and a newly found bow that also doesn't much like undead, and the vampire and his spawn are killed with surprisingly little fuss.

For the first time in the campaign the ranger shines. And with the vampire on the floor and unconscious we work out what to do to kill him permanently. We run a stake through his heart to prevent regeneration, then drag his body upstairs and out to the courtyard, so that he can bask in some deadly sunlight.

And as quickly as the ranger hits his stride he breaks it. 'Can we sing Ain't No Sunshine Where He's Gone?' No, no we can't, because that's exactly the opposite of what we're doing. Let's just hope there are more vampires to fight, so we can feel better about him again.

The gate to hell is alluring, but the hole beneath a stone desk is more intriguing. The only problem is that we can't get to the hole beneath the desk, what with the desk being in the way. We have a few potions of gaseous form with us, but not enough for the whole party any more, as Brennan panicked and drank his to flee from some baying hounds, and if we need to come back up this way they won't really help with getting us down there.

A simple solution is for one of us to drink a potion, take gaseous form, and scout through the hole to see if it's worth taking the time to demolish the desk. So that's what we do. Explore times for the monk, which is me! I become a gas, which is quite liberating and lets me fart with no one noticing, and disappear down the hole beneath the desk.

Under the desk are stairs leading down to a corridor, which opens to three more corridors, one with hulking doors broken off their hinges. Yep, I'd say there is something to investigate down here, so I turn my gassy self around and return to the room above. On regaining my normal form I tell the others what I saw, and that our only real option is to smash the desk to pieces, which will take a while.

Arleks, who it must be admitted was paying pretty much no attention last week when I gave the solid stone desk a tentative whack, boasts that 'I can break it apart in 2 hits. I have a big hammer'.

'No, it will take a lot of effort. The desk is very hard.' I know. My best shot barely made a chip.

'I have a very big hammer', he says. Okay, then, give it a go. Arleks brings his very big hammer crashing down on the desk, slamming it heavily. He rolls the maximum 8 points of damage on his D8, adding his strength and other bonuses as normal.

'It will take about another, oh, 170 hits', estimates the GM.

'You may need to roll higher on that D8', I say to Arleks, as we all start pounding on the stone desk so that we can advance our adventure.

It seems to be the paladin's dream: a room with treasure everywhere. Magical treasure too, just lying around, waiting to be collected. If only it weren't for the warning written on the wall.

'HE WHO STEALS FROM ME DIES BY MY HAND'

The warning seems to be backed up by a substantial pile of bones in the middle of the room, overlooked by a skeleton sitting in a rather comfy couch.

Then again, the skeleton isn't animated, and we are brave adventurers who actively seek challenges, so we should be able to just take what we want and swat aside whatever threat may come. Right?

'The loot's not going anywhere. We can, uh, come back for it later.' That doesn't sound like the Ganelon we've come to know. I never thought we'd see his cowardice finally overcome his avarice.

An abandoned underground bar has some dolls sitting around a miniature table. One is a dragon, one a teddy bear, one a girls' doll, one a scarecrow, and one a Mwangi fetish.

'Whose wangi?'

'Mwangi.' Yes, I'm that easily amused. But clearly dolls sitting in a bar isn't normal, so we must do something.

'I could detect magic', says Brennan, already suspecting the obvious answer.

'Shall I detect evil?' asks Ganelon, but it doesn't seem worth it, as Brennan strides in to the room. 'What is this, the Emberson school of trap detection?'

'It's more the school of pragmatic adventuring. If they're going to animate, we may as well get on with it.' And, quelle surprise, the tiny dolls animate and start to rush towards us.

Yet again, another fight where natural weapons are used, and my training in disarm skills goes to waste. But I still have my uses. The toys are tiny, and so to attack they need to enter our square to get close enough. This provokes an attack of opportunity, and with my Stand Still feat I can choose to perform this combat manoeuvre as my attack of opportunity.

A successful strike stops the attacker in its path and prevents it moving for the remainder of its round, and as it stops the dolls moving in to my square it stops them getting close enough to attack. Free from harm, I can use my own in-turn action to attack with a flurry of blows against the tiny dolls around me.

I pick the teddy bear first, as it has grown some nasty looking claws. A couple of rounds of combat has the bear's head ripped off its furry shoulders, eliciting screams from the other dolls around it. 'Ted's dead, baby. Ted's dead.'

The door with the melted lock leads to a new section of Devlehaven. The first room we encounter has some weird magical trap that creeps us out, and the second room looks like it will have a second, similar effect. But, being adventurers, we can't just ignore it. In we go.

I sense the trap coming and am able to dive out of the room before the effects unfold, although Brennan and Ganelon can't react in time and are taken hold by some magical compulsion. Arleks was cautious enough not to enter, so he and I stand outside watching what happens.

After a bit of weird conversation about events past, Brennan and Ganelon take up arms against each other. This can't end well. Brennan nauseates Ganelon, effectively taking him out of combat, and moves in for the kill. I do what I must and jump back in to the room, getting myself in-between the pair of them and disarm Brennan of his weapon.

Arleks helps too, by casting the calm emotions spell, which should pacify everyone so that we can leave the room without injury. Brennan saves against its effects, as does Ganelon. I, however, fail to make the save and stop butting in to their disagreement. Hey, let them kill each other. I think maybe the spell backfired a little.

Brennan draws a secondary weapon and, as Ganelon is now puking in a corner of the room but I'm still nearby, he moves in to attack me.

'Hey, man, give peace a'—*thwack*—'chance, pigfucker!'

And, once more, we have an adventure where I am successfully attacked by another member of the party. Much like contracting Mummy Rot, it is our signature piece.

Thankfully, Brennan has a moment of clarity before he can finish the job, and decides that exiting the room is a better move than picking up his longsword. Arleks's spell's effects now gone, I pick up Brennan's weapons for him and exit the room too. Now only Ganelon remains in the fateful room, still puking up his guts.

'This is our best opportunity so far. There are no other exits.'

'You're not just going to close the door on him, are you?'

'No. I was thinking about setting fire to the room first.'

But after a couple more rounds, and before I find my tinderstick, Ganelon recovers and we are a whole party once more.

'Before you open the door, you notice...'

'It's closed?'

'That it's already open?'

'No, it can't be that. We didn't notice the front door was ajar when we spent five minutes trying to open it, even with the GM pointing this out to us.'

'...that the lock has been melted by acid.'

The baying mastiffs have split the party, and the two of us that remained may have been unaffected by the fearful howl but we were still nearly split by the dogs' bites. Thanks to a bit of cunning combat, we beat a tactical withdrawal and manage to heal up and wait for the other party members to return from wherever they ran off to.

Well, the cleric returns. Brennan ran through a locked door, which he found easier to do after drinking his potion of gaseous form. Once his fear subsided he came back, saw the mastiff by itself and, assuming we had run away or had been eaten, seeped back through the door and started making his slow way around to the front entrance. We were just around the corner, as it turns out, readying to continue the combat. As a precaution against the baying, Arleks first casts silence and then we charge back in to the room.

'Brennan', Arleks says, 'are you still going to head around to the front of the building?' A single mastiff should no longer cause us too much trouble, but we could always use more help. 'Can't you hear the sounds of the combat now?'

'Not with the silence spell active, no.'

'Right. I remember casting that.' As it turns out, three-against-one is much better odds that two-against-two, and the second doggy falls without any more drama.

'Can I make a knowledge (engineering) check to see what the effects would be of smashing the tank of water?'

'Perception checks, please.' Dice skitter across the table to land on a variety of numbers, such is the random nature inherent in the process. 'Those of you with good rolls hear the sound of tables breaking, and then you see this', says the GM, as he places a rather large miniature on to the map.

'How bad do our perception checks need to be to not see the huge skeletal triceratops?' But it was just the sound of tables breaking that would have alerted us seconds early, as we enter initiative order for combat.

'Yes!' The ranger seems pretty excited about this fight, because he's fighting 'my favoured enemy!'

'Your favoured enemy is a triceratops? That's pretty niche. I hope you get a really good bonus against them.'

'No, undead are my favoured enemy.' Okay, that makes more sense. 'Then again', he says, 'if it is skeletal and immune to my arrows, I'm screwed. And if it has DR 10 I'm screwed. Even if it has DM 5 I'm screwed'.

The GM senses where this is going. 'If it is a god, you're screwed. If it has 4,000 hit points, is immune to damage, or hits for a million damage, you're screwed. If we're just listing the ways you could be screwed, we could be here some time.'

'If it requires him shooting his bow, he's screwed.'

'If it requires being skilled or competent, he's screwed.'

'If it requires someone not complaining about status effects, we're screwed.'

Yes, we're going to be here for some time. But we are also screwed. The skeletal, shadowy triceratops charges forwards and gores our cleric for 35 points of damage, which would take any of us from completely healthy to being on death's door. It's time to be a hero!

I dash forwards, tumbling through the undead creature's extended reach to avoid attacks of opportunity, stumbling at the end to land right on top of its horn. The 33 damage from the gore, on the understanding that a second such hit would kill me, convinces me to use my standard action to heroically play dead. 'Shh. No one tell him.'

Ganelon charges in! He takes a horn to the chest and suffers a nasty wound as a result. This gets Ganelon a bit miffed, as if paladins would be exempt from damage. 'Just be thankful it hasn't worked out it has power attack yet', says Brennan, not quite helpfully.

This calls for desperate measures, and we somehow convince Ganelon that now is actually a good time to use his limited smite evil ability. Even better, he hits with his smite attack to score a critical blow! 50 points in one hit doesn't fell the skeletal triceratops, but it makes his bones shake. 'Are you going to make me roll my 20% miss chance for the shadowy concealment it's got going?'

'I am now that you've reminded me.'

Seeing the rag dolls the triceratops has already thrown around, and this brief hope that we may actually prevail, some sharp glances are directed the paladin's way. 'What? We can't cheat!' Yes, yes we can. Luckily, the paladin is not fooled by the shadows and the mighty strike stands. One rabbit shot by the ranger later and the triceratops is nothing but a pile of bones.