Saturday, December 25, 2010

Merry Christmas!


Ultrasanta! Ultrasanta! Here he comes, from the sky!


Ultrasanta! Ultrasanta! Watch the reindeer fly!


In his super sled he comes! From a million miles away!


From a distant North Pole land! Comes our hero, Ultrasanta!


Merry Christmas, Everybody!

Have a safe, happy, and prosperous New Year in 2011!

Sunday, December 19, 2010

LL at Paul's: First Round Draft Picks.

Howsa dooza.

Once again, I am here to report on my weekly Labyrinth Lord game at my buddy Paul's.

This session was one of those sessions that was mostly logistics and long term strategic discussions. We'd lost two player characters and three henchmen in our last raid on the dreadful Skull Mountain, so there were replacements in order.

Our first order of business was seeing if we could get our veteran thief Klint raised. We had a fairly intact corpse (sans leg from an earlier misadventure) and a small ruby of considerable value for a proper sacrifice, so we hurried back to the town of Greenwild to hopefully prevail on the Temple of the Good Earth (who also make FANTASTIC bread, btw) to bring our late, lamented comrade back from the great beyond.

Well, the temple was happy to do the ceremony, since we'd struck a blow for goodness and niceness in wiping out the evil cult of the Obsidian Heart. They struck up a marathon chant, bathing the corpse in water from their recently reconsecrated holy font. After several hours, bupkus. Klint apparently didn't want to come back from whatever afterlife he'd gone to. (Or couldn't come back. He's either doing the waltz in heaven or tap dancing on a hotplate in the other place...)

The real reason for this is that Klint's player tried rolling up a replacement character and liked him better. So, the ceremony didn't work. We got the keep the ruby, tho, so all good.

From there, we got to discussing what we would try to tackle next, since we were kind of between epic quests. A faction of us, the Deacon included, wanted to go back to Skull Mountain and clear it out once and for all. An okay idea, but the High Priest of the Temple pointed out that what we'd be tugging the tail on was an evil god. Way above our pay grade, so while he applauded our intentions, the execution of our plan probably would result in a whuppin' for the good guys.

Other options were to go to Restenford and see what the scene was like, or do the same at Bridgefair, which when last we left was buckling down for a siege from the same force that knocked over Restenford.

As we plotted and planned, we also went out and ran some errands. Greenwild was kind of middle of the road between sleepy little Restenford and big bustling Bridgefair, so it had a decent selection of goods and services.

First we hit the jewel merchant, to sell off the various gems and jewelry we'd picked up along the way. After selling all the bling except for the ruby, which would be handy in the event of needing to get someone raised from the dead, we pooled up the cash from Klint's bag of holding and the stuff we'd picked up in Skull mountain and divvied it all up, with each of us pulling down about 100 gp (which using Pauls house ruled money system wherein a Gold Piece is the new Platinum Piece).

We then dug up a mage, who had kind of a hippy sounding name that I'm afraid I don't recall right now. We had him ID all the potions and magical gear we'd stripped from frikkin' Cooper and his cult. Turns out the slimeball was wearing +2 leather armor and a ring of protection, and wielding a +1 Mace with some other magic on it that the mage couldn't identify.

After some discussion, the Deacon got the leather armor and Ring, with the understanding that the ring was party property until such time as the Deacon gave up a magic item divvy the next time it came up. So now I'm up to a beefier 3 AC from my perennial 5, which is good. I'm not usually in the front row, since my Mojo Stick allows me to attack from the 2nd. rank and heal up the pointy end of the party, but still it's nice to be a little tougher, after last week's fight with Cooper and the bludgeoning we took from the lava breathing statue.

He also identified the black and white flasks. The white flask held a powder which when mixed with water gave off clouds of poison gas. So it was very much the superweapon that some of the party see it as. We'll have to think of how best to use it without accidentally murdering ourselves in the process. The black flask held a magic oil that when added to a scrying pool it was keyed to could be used to view remote locations.

This led us to make a decision on our next mission. We figured we'd go back to Skull Mountain, avoiding taking on the evil volcano god that lives there, but clearing out what lesser monsters we might find. From there we'd use the scrying pool to check out Bridgefair and Restenford and see what that haps are.

Our final errand, besides buying up sufficient vittles for the trip, was to bulk up the roster a bit. So we hit The Pikeman, a local dive where we might hire some muscle.

There we met a halfling thief who claimed to be Klint's brother. Apparently Klint was a halfling afflicted with gigantism all along. Also, apparently they both belonged to a thieves brotherhood where all the members were named Klint, or perhaps Klint was a title, kind of like Darth. Since it was all there in the former Klint's will, we had no choice but to believe him, so now Half Klint has joined the party as our thief, inheriting his "brother's" Bag of Holding, his magic hat of seeing in the dark (which now SIX men have died for), his Ring of Feather Fall, his magic Sword +1(+2 vs. Undead), and his spellbook.

Our call for henchmen brought us two applicants, an earnest Paladin (whose name eludes me) and a shifty guy in black who seemed to be all about the stabbin'. We decided to go with the Pally and give the shifty guy a thanks but no thanks. He got a little rambunctious about it, threatening us that we'd regret it. Talk to the Mojo Stick, buddy...

Anyway, that was that, and we set out again for the Dead Hills and Skull Mountain, scarce believing that we were actually going back there for another incursion. I guess accruing experience points doesn't necessarily imply learning from experience.

Our trip was largely trouble free, except on the third day when my statement of trouble free-ness was emphatically contradicted.

We were plodding along thru open country when a huge winged shape flew overhead, blotting out the sun. It dove on us with a shriek, and buried its talons and hind leg claws into one of the draft horses pulling the cart. A gryphon! Wowsers!

So we all charged in to chase it off, and it turned into a pretty epic slugfest. Hearth's Ring of Animal Control had no effect, probably because it couldn't tune in the station properly between "lion" and "eagle". I whaled at it with the Mojo Stick but kept missing like a bozo. The thing had a wicked Claw/Claw/Bite routine, and mangled up Half Klint and tossed him aside like a chew toy. The halfling scurried under a bush, vanishing from sight.

The thing also laid a pretty serious lacerating on Frog, our former henchman turned full fledged PC. We were concerned that his player, who'd also played Liam, Gentleman Jack, and The Prince, was gonna have another dead character on his hands, but thankfully his luck and armor held. I guess being mauled by a gryphon wasn't ironic enough a death for a player who's trademark is becoming death by irony. Frog getting killed off by a gryphon was only ironic in the Alanis Morisette sense of the word (i.e. not ironic in the least, and you really should look up the definition of the word before doing a song about it.)

Isn't it ironic? Don't you think?

Still, we had the beast outnumbered and eventually the swords and spears of our fighters took the creature down. After we got everybody patched up and took our trophies from the creature's plume, we shoved it to the side of the road and moved on. (We probably could have eaten it, but it's hard to tell whether you should have red wine or white wine with gryphon...)

From there it was a fairly uneventful trip to the cave at the base of Skull Mountain where we set up camp. After a little debate about which approach to take, we decided to just walk on up to the front of the skull face and go in the "mouth".

And that's where we left off, standing on the platform and gazing in on the eerie stillness of the cave where so far we've taken a heavy weight beating every time we've gone in. Here's hoping for better things in 2011, since this is probably the final Labyrinth Lord session report for this year.

Thanks again to Paul for running an awesome show all year. Lookin' forward to seein' what you have in store for us next year. And I tip my hat to my fellow 10d gamers.

See you guys on the flipside.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

LL at Paul's: A Burning Sensation

Wowsers! Here we are again!

Okay, so last week we'd geared up, staffed up, and were ready to set out and go kick the collective kiesters of the evil volcano cult/thieves guild up on Skull mountain. We'd added three more henchmen, and a new player character in the form of an island prince who went by the name, The Prince. Our senior thief Klint was sporting a peg leg after having lost his leg to the cult's major domo, the sinister Cooper. We were all spoilin' for a little bit o' the dish best served cold.

So off we set from Greenwild, taking the long road through the dead hills. We met some wildlife along the way, but each time Hearth and his magic Ring of Aminal Control spared us a mauling. He sent a bear back into it's cave before it could block our path, and he sent a mountain lion, I think, off on a long run so we could finish our lunches at a roadside picnic table in peace. So yeah, handy thing, that ring.

We got to the hidey cave at the foot of Skull Mountain and found some alarming changes to the landscape. The grass and shrubs that had formerly concealed the front entrance had been torn away and trampled down, as if a furious battle had been fought here. We saw many footprints, and some splashes of blood, that didn't bode well. Checking inside, we saw a big black heart had been scrawled on the back wall. This led us to surmise that the Obsidian Heart had sprung an attack on whoever was here, best guess would be Bors and the Haberdashers, and things didn't go so well for our hat wearing friends. Hmmm. Hmmmmmmm.

So, we figured we ought git to it while the gittin' was good. We set up Darius and Garant at the cave with the horses n' mules and whatnot. There was no pulling the wagon inside, but we told 'em if things go hairy go hide in the cave and save what they could.

Our hirelings secured, the party of nine bold adventurers/henchmen set out to climb the mountain and slip into the caldera at the top, as we'd done before. The sinister drums were booming loudly from the depths of the mountain, but we didn't let it bug us. Yeah, keep drumming, culty, easier for us to find ya. Creeps...

We lowered each party member down in turn, with our new freshman thief Hare Sarlickson bringing up the rear with the rope and the Ring of Feather Fall that was our insurance policy against sudden vertical catastrophes. We crept into the crevasse, and made our way to the hole that led to a shaft that wound its way down to the counting room. We lowered Klint down head first by the rope, with instructions to either tug on the rope or tap out Morse code with his peg if he got into trouble.

Everything was clear at the hidden entry to the counting room, so we all went down. When Klint opened the door, there was nothing but darkness, which was a good sign. Nobody in there (unless the cult had some morlocks or something working for them).

We decided our first order of business would be to map out the rest of this bottom level, with an eye toward finding the contents of that nifty treasure list we'd found in the counting room last time. So we followed the hallways to the south, and stopped to check out the door that we'd ignored last time we were down.

This led to a small storage room lined with shelves. There was a coffer and a bag in here, which we decided to just sweep into Klint's Bag of Holding and deal with whatever locks or traps might be on them later. We searched the walls and shelves thoroughly, but didn't find any additional hidden doors or compartments.

We then proceeded to make our way down to the intersection where Evund Knifeweilder, our shortest term henchman ever, got shanked by the lurking Cooper. To the east was the large temple with the reptilian monster altar and the skulls lining the walls. We'd been here, and would check it out later.

To the west, we found a smaller room with a pool of some mysterious liquid in the middle. All around the chamber on the floors and walls a bunch of mystic type symbols were scrawled, and glowed faintly, I think. Unnerved, we didn't want to enter, so we had Klint cast his one spell, Detect Magic. He spotted some magical stuff in an alcove in the corner.

Taking note of that, we escorted him around to the other rooms so that he could suss out the magic stuff before the spell wore off. In the Gorn room, he saw that the statue was magical, and I think a couple other things were giving off some vibes but I don't rightly remember what.

With a couple minutes left on his detectometer, we sent him back to the room with the tapestries and the candelabra where we'd found The Prince, Belanus Birchson, and the late, lamented Caravan Guy. Klint let out a shout of surprise as a couple of lizard men jumped him. I guess the scaly bastards had been hiding around a corner as we passed.


We galloped to his aid and started smackin. Got a couple good blammos in with the Mojo Stick, and Kashim was slicing and dicing nicely. Hare tried to get in a backstab and nearly got killed hard, coming away with only 1 HP to his name. After we'd put the lizard men out of our misery we instructed the little guy to stay the heck outta combat from here on out.

After dragging the once and future handbags into a corner, we decided to give the room a once over. We pulled down all the tapestries and searched around for secret doors, but didn't find any. Aside from the glowing candelabra, which probably just had a Continual Light spell on it, this place was a wash.

So we decided to go poke around in the reptile idol room. We got busy searching the walls, checking over the carved skulls and other bits of grisly decor. Frog, our senior henchman, found an actual skull popped in an alcove among the carved ones. We checked it out thoroughly but didn't find anything of immediate interest.

We were nervous about the big magical idol, depicting a reptilian humanoid seemingly in mid stride passing through solid stone, with its clawed hand held up as if it were accepting a donation. We tried putting the skull there, but it didn't do anything. In fact, I don't know what it was we did to upset it. It just started moving and attacked us!
Yeah. So we formed up and started trying to fight back, with the guys with magical weapons taking the front. We got in some good hits on the thing, as far as I can tell, but it kinda trumped us all when it started barfing lava all over us.

Yeah, right off I think one of the miner brothers got his face set on fire, and the other one took it in the knee. A couple of gouts of burning rock later and they were crisped. The Prince got it really bad, a couple times. Before we knew it he was dead, and this particular player's third character had suffered another tragic, ironic death.

(Namely, his elven ranger, Liam O'Gara, was mauled by a cougar driven out of the woods by a forest fire he'd set. Gentleman Jack Getz, the foppish dandy, died naked in the form of a pig. And now a Polynesian styled Prince had died from lava burns. Farewell, sweet prince. We hardly knew ye... We'll never forget your sacrifice.)

Things were looking damn grim, and so the Deacon started telling the surviving henchmen to run for it. Klint hobbled away after I healed him up enough to move. It was all I could do to get Kashim to peel off. He wanted to go down fighting. I wanted to go.

Finally I persuaded him, and we scampered away, down by three guys. The thing didn't give chase, instead heading back to the wall and merging back into its former place.

So... ow! We regrouped at the branch of the two corridors and caught our breath. The Deacon used up all of his healing, including the scroll and potion of extra healing we'd purchased in Greenwild. That got Frog and Kashim up and functional, and cancelled everybody's critical injuries. We'd taken a hard tap to the face and had a bloody nose, so our earlier bravado had kind of changed to desperate fatalism. We still had to fight our way out of the mountain, or climb back up the half pipe and slink away in defeat.

We decided to go back to the chamber with the dark pool and all the magical markings and grab the magic stuff we saw there at least. This turned out to be a couple of flasks, a white one full of white powder and a black one full of a black oily substance. We'd obviously been hoping for healing potions, but c'est la donjon. We started to experiment, mixing a drop of the powder with the oil. That made a sludgy goop that just laid there.

We gave the pool of water the once over, and determined by lowering one of our magical, glowing Continual Light rocks down on a rope that it was about eight feet deep. Maybe there was something down there. We decided it would be the height of stupidity to go check.

So we settled for a lesser stupidity. Still fiddling with the flasks' contents, we took a pinch of the white powder and dropped it in the dark liquid. This caused billowing clouds of choking gas to rise up from the pool, filling the chamber. We all started coughing and hacking and making saves. Everybody made it except for our two thieves, Klint and Hare, who collapsed. We grabbed them and dragged them out. Much to our dismay, when we got clear, we found we were dragging a pair of corpses!

Dang... Near TPK and this was only room 3. Our forays into Skull Mountain were very Hobbesian... Nasty, Brutish, and Short. Particularly grievous for me was the loss of Klint, who was the only other character besides the Deacon who'd been with the party since the start. Man...

Now we were in survival and GTFO mode, with only four guys left. We decided that we would try to bring Klint's body out and hopefully find someplace that would do a Raise Dead. (This was less from story reasons as it was 'cos we'd killed him while his player was absent.) So we set about lightening the load 'cos we had to travel light. We dumped out his bag of holding, and lo and behold there was a TON of cash and gems in there that he'd obviously innocently forgotten to tell us about. Yeah... Maybe Klint's loss wasn't so grievous after all...

Still, we figured we'd raise him if we could, despite that. We chucked any extra gear, including his peg leg, and stuffed his carcass in the bag. We opened the sack and coffer we'd found in the store room (and by open, I mean slash/smash open.) and found more money and gems, and a couple of potion vials. Sadly, one of the vials got smashed as we roughhoused the coffer open, but all in all we cashed in pretty good.

So we filled the Bag of Holding with Klint and cash and made our way toward the stairs in the counting room. Our route out the caldera was closed to us now that both guys who could have made the climb were dead.

We made our way up the stairs, and found ourselves in the trappy labyrinth where we'd taken such a pounding in our first foray. Eventually, by carefully following the twists and turns, we managed to connect the tunnels to our existing map, and navigated our way to the surface after stepping gingerly over tripwires and trapdoors.

When we got to the upper level, we came to the room with the two drums, and found a couple guys taking a smoke break after a long session of drumming. We jumped 'em and killed 'em where they stood, and then rolled onward to the room with the dark stone statue. There, we headed up into the watch rooms and brought the fight to the cultists on guard up there.

Kashim ran into the room with the brazier and shoved one guy's face into the fire, while Frog and The Deacon went after the other guy. We had 'em dropped before they could put up any resistance.

We then headed down the other tunnel leading to the other eyesocket of the skull. One of the guys there had managed to nock an arrow, which he promptly shot thru the Deacon's leg, temporarily laming him. Kashim and Frog finished the bastard off, while the Deacon pulled out one of the flasks we'd just found, hoping it was healing potion. Mercifully it was Extra Healing, so my critical went away and I got back 2d6 pts.

We looked out the eye socket, and saw a big torchlight jamboree going on out on the platform out front. There were drugged out cultists lying around all over, and a pile of dead bodies at the center. We saw three figures in cloaks and robes go running in through the skull mouth. Trouble!

We ran down to head 'em off, with The Deacon warming up his Hold Person spell and Hearth prepping Sleep. We jumped out into the hall and let loose with our spells. One each of the two lesser cult leaders got neutralized by our spells, one slouching off to dreamland while the other froze in place.

That left us Cooper to deal with. He led with a Hold Person of his own, and thankfully managed to connect with Hearth, freezing the elf in place while Kashim, Frog, and The Deacon charged him.

From there we commenced to hack, slash, and smash. Cooper was tough, and probably had some kind of magical protection. He started chanting as if he was summoning something, raving about the Avatar coming to kill us all. (I'm not sure if he meant big blue cat people or little bald kids with arrows tattooed on their heads...) The Deacon kept whiffing with his Mojo Stick, which sucked 'cos I really wanted to knock the bastard's teeth in with a little BreeshkBOOM. He nailed me good on my hand with a mace, taking me to crit and putting me out of the fight. It was really hairy, 'cos I sure as HECK didn't want to be taken out by some wild eyed enemy cleric. That would have sucked.

Eventually, Kashim and Frog brought the smackdown, with Frog wielding Klint's fancy magic sword, and they brought the villain down.

Serves ya right, ya freak!

After catching our breath, we went out onto the platform and set t' stabbin' all the zoned out cultists. Good riddance to bad rubbish. We were mildly bummed to find the bodies they'd been using for their little Lollapalooza were Bors and his men. The Haberdashers had worn their last hats.

We lined 'em up as respectfully as we could, and limped down the mountain to the hidey cave to heal up, vowing to come back and claim the mountain for ourselves or something, or at least get our guys some decent burials, now that the Obsidian Heart was out of commission.

And that's where we left off.

Whew...

Real nail biter of a session there. We got pounded Old School style, nine guys down to four, and from really nasty causes too, like lava and poison gas. We came REALLY close to TPK. It was as close as the Deacon had been to goin' t' meet the Allmaker since he'd been crushed about the chest by that giant crab statue.

It was awesome!

That's what old school play is about, baby. Thrills, chills, spills, and high body counts. We cashed in big on XP, and our faithful hench honcho Frog leveled up. It was satisfying to take out the cult, and it was a really close fight too.

So now we got a vacated, novelty volcano, and two new characters that need to be made. Liam/GentelmanJack/The Prince's player has decided to just run Frog from here on out, so now it's up to Yøgund/Jantz's player and Klint's player to bring us some new hotness.

All told, a solid night of gaming. Thanks once again to Paul and the 10d gamers for another rip snortin' session.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

LL at Paul's: Dog and Pony Show.

Ho there, ladies and gents.

Another week, another gripping tale of Labyrinth Lording from the table of Paul and the 10d gamers.

So when last we left off we'd dragged our half mangled carcasses back to the hidey cave after making two assaults on Skull Mountain and the evil thieves guild/cult we'd found there. We'd managed to liberate three prisoners from the depths of the tunnels, and once they'd snapped out of their drug induced catatonia there were introductions all around.

Foremost among them was a swarthy, tattooed fellow from a far off island kingdom to the south, who's name escapes me at this moment but who claimed to be a prince of his land. In general, the fellow's name was difficult to call to mind, so we took to just calling him The Prince (in much the same way my character is known as The Deacon). He was a fighting man, and seemed game for ongoing adventure, but he copped an awful lot of attitude for a guy with no pants.

The other two rescuees were mercifully more clothed, and one of them was, I'm quite happy to say, the object of our quest, Belanus Beechson the wayward acolyte of the temple of the Good Earth in Greenwild. The other guy was a merchant caravan guard who'd fallen afoul of the Obsidian Order. His name also escapes me, but that's all right because sadly he didn't last very long...

As night fell and we bedded down, around about the second watch we heard howling coming from outside the cave, and soon two gimundous wolves came sniffing around looking for a late night snack. They were as big as ponies, and The Deacon was afraid we'd have to do some more lycanthropy checks.
Ponies, I tell you! Pooooooooonieeeeeees!

Well, turns out this was a prime opportunity for our elven wizard Hearth to test out that Ring of Animal Control that The Deacon gave him. He reached out and took control of three of the brutes, stilling them and making them docile, while Kashim leapt to the attack with slashing sword to fight off the one that was dragging caravan guard guy away screaming.

After a furious fight, the beast lay dead, and three of its fellows were mesmerized by Hearth's ring. Sadly, caravan guy had succumbed to his wounds and lay dead as well. We stabbed the rest of the pack and stacked 'em up outside, then buried caravan guy next to Jantz the Ranger in the back of the cavern. (Sorry caravan guy. Your name's inscribed on the rock where you'll always be remembered... somehow... Meh...)

Thankfully, the fact that Hearth could control the beasts indicated that they were just regular old worgs or something, and that I wouldn't have to do any regular checkups to make sure somebody in the party wasn't gonna go all lycanthropic on us.

So anyway, the rest of the night passed uneventfully, save for a spirited debate on what our next move was gonna be. We could either head for Bridgefair, which was nearer and had more stuff, or we could make our way to Greenwild and drop off Belanus for the deposit.

We decided to head for Bridgefair. Partly so we could do some shopping/selling, but also 'cos that pointy eared bastard Tinhelm had stolen our horses and we wanted to git him while the gittin' was good.

So we trudged our way over hill and dale, and if there was gonna be a title for this stretch of travel, it would be "Hearth's Wild Kingdom". We had a couple encounters, and in both cases they were easily dealt with through our elf wizard's new found control over the critters.

Once, as we passed through a wooded area, we chanced upon a stampede of muskrats crossing our path, followed closely by a pair of giant weasels. The creatures turned on us, their fangy jaws slavering, but Hearth took one over and had it spring at it's companion, resulting in a big, bloody weasel fight. Once one had overcome the other, we slew the survivor lest it turn on us next. Weasels... they totally want to rip your flesh...

Next time, use more chlorine in the pool, buddy.

After having conquered the giant weasels, we made our way along to Bridgefair. When we got there, we found the city prepping for a siege, as an unknown army based in Restenford was making its way toward them.

After consulting with the gate guard, we opted to take a quick jaunt into town before the gates closed, maybe for good. Well, those of us who weren't wanted and liable to be killed on sight went in.

We hit the mercantile section of town, first stopping at our favorite place, the gnomish jewelers. Sadly, the adorable little guys weren't buying after having been robbed of their gold by some enterprising thieves. I guess we caught them while they were a little short. HAH!

... ahem ...

We did pay for them to appraise the handful of jewels we'd gotten hold of in our recent adventures. Unfortunately, they weren't worth much more than 2 gold apiece, but still it was better than nothin'.

We thanked them and wished them luck, then headed over to the horse trading/ration selling part of the market. There we bought up a stock of trail rations for our long journey to Greenwild, and purchased a couple mules to haul the food and to help along our recently handicapabled' companion Klint.

As the sun set, we hied ourselves out of town, asking at the gates if anyone had seen an elf in a big shiny hat lead a train of horses over the past couple days. Turns out one of them had, which was a disappointment to some of the party members who'd hoped it was all a big, expensive misunderstanding. So yeah, we've got an elvish horse thief on our hit list.

The real bummer of it all is there's no getting those horses back. They'll have been drafted into the war effort, and since Prince Hank seems to favor a head on pike style of justice there's no real legal recourse for it. Ah well. I'll miss ya, Buttercup.

After spending a bit more than we should have on ferry rides to keep a river between us and the approaching army, we set out from Bridgefair and headed toward Greenwild.

As we passed thru the hills, we encountered a bunch of wild horses, and Hearth unlimbered his magic ring again, culling two of them from the herd while the rest galloped away. The Prince was ready and willing to give chase to them, but we decided we were happy enough with this horsy windfall and called it a good outing. As it was, the wild mustangs were difficult for anyone but fighters to control, so with a couple extra rides we continued on our way.

After a couple more days uneventful travel, we made it to Greenwild as night fell. We hustled Belanus Beechson to the Temple of the Good Earth and presented him, and folks were all glad to see him. Thus, we closed the book on SOMETHING at least. Kashim's public nudity and befouling of a sacred aquifer were forgiven, and the priests even were willing to tell him about the Good Earth and the wonderful plan it had for his life. They were also cool enough to put us all up for as long as we wanted to stay in Greenwild, which is groovy. The bread was good, at least.

So now we were settled and feeling something of a financial pinch. We re-encountered Garant Graywand, our groom, and Darius the dog handler, which was awesome. Also awesome, after our big horse loss, was the fact that we still had our two drafters and the cart, as well as our faithful dogs, Yøgund and Liam. Garant was glad to see us, and we set him to work training our newly acquired riding horses. Hirelings rock!

With that in hand, we decided what we wanted to do next was go back to Skull Mountain and clean the place out once and for all. The longer we let 'em sit, the more poor schmoes would get captured and sacrificed, and plus that treasure ledger we read in the counting room was pretty attractive. So we set about arming and equipping ourselves for a big expedition and frontal assault.

We bought a bunch of rations, and went to the Good Earth temple and got hold of a vial of holy water from the newly re-filtered fountain, as well as a three dose vial of healing potion and a healing scroll with three charges at pretty reasonable prices. We found a carpenter who sold us a good peg leg, lightly used, for Klint. And finally, we went around to the tavern and recruited another bunch of henchmen. We got three after we made our pitch, two burly miners named Ouri of the Evening Eye and Malatier the Boar, and a jittery little guy who called himself Hare Sarlickson, who claimed to be "fast! fast!". So two fighters and a thief. Good haul, all told, we need a few extra coffin stuffers to round out the group now that we're down to just Frog.

And thus, armed up and kitted out, we rolled out the Greenwild gates, destination... Skull Mountain.

And that's where we left off.

So yeah, a good session. One of those that's more shopping and book-keeping than adventure, but still some interesting stuff with Hearth and the magic critter gitter ring. I'm of course concerned about Bridgefair falling under the eye of whatever conquering force put the nom nom nom on Restenford, but heck, I guess if we keep a couple towns ahead of 'em we'll turn out okay. I hear Rosewater's nice this time of year.

Anyway, thanks again to Paul for running this hootenanny and thanks to the internationally flavored 10d gamers for being such a fun group.

Poonieeeees!