Lets rescue the...gold

Back-tracking the trail of the bandits, the party work their way  towards the bandit's mine. Cresting a tree covered hill they hear the sounds of industry (punctuated with the occasional scream) and smell sulphuric smoke ahead.

Falandar climbs a tree and looks down into a valley to see a wooden walled camp surrounding a large pit. The camp sports several guard towers, a number of buildings and a large double-story barn like structure. Most surprising is the presence of a giant who is happily crushing the rock and ore getting hauled out of the pit by chained captives. Here is what he sees (each square is 5 yards):

After much deliberation the party decides that they could poison the well in the camp to take out the guards and perhaps burn down the wooden camp walls. So they head back to Sommeville to get supplies. In Sommeville, Alexa secures 3 casks of oil and Andreus uses his gossip skills to track down a herbalist. The herbalist (an old crone) reluctantly sells him some Belladonna but informs him that it will need to be administered to food not dumped into water.

The players head back and a couple days after first sighting the mine, the party are once again surveying the camp.

It appears that during the day the bandits leave the gates open but the towers on either side of the gate are manned by a guard each. Since it is late afternoon the party decide that they need to get into the camp asap to try poison the evening meal.

Alexa is convinced to sneak into the camp using her cloaking magic. Alexa nervously sneaks through the gates (the guards both fail to spot her), has a quick look around and races back to the woods before her spell wears out. Her quick look-see gives her two likely targets for the kitchen.

Next Alexa uses her doppelganger spell to make herself look like one of the guards and then cloaks herself again to sneak back into the camp. Once again the guards fail to spot her as she passes through the gates. Alexa runs behind her first target building and strolls out from behind it when her cloaking spell runs out.

Luck is with her and she quickly locates the kitchen. Unfortunately the kitchen is occupied by a grubby cook who attempts to engage Alexa in conversation. Since her doppleganger spell does not disguise her voice she decides to cast a sleep spell on the cook. Whilst the cook is knocked out Alexa dumps the Belladonna into the large pot cooking on the fire.

Cloaking herself again, she hurriedly makes her way out of the camp.

The party wait and hear what appears to be a dinner call and a while later the see a shift change of the guards in the towers. An hour or so after the gates are closed, the party sees one of the guards violently throw up from the top of the tower. The party hears the other guards laughing and mocking the ill guard. A half-hour later the other guard hurriedly leaves his post. The party hears then shouts of consternation and after another hour things go quite.

Alexa scales the gate with a rope and grappling hook (and a leg up from Andreus) and opens the gate. The rest of the party cautiously makes their way into the camp. They spot several bandits sprawled dead in the dirt.

They also spot the giant, leaning up against the barn, drinking from a beer keg. Unfortunately the giants spots the party too. He staggers to his feet, hefts a large chunk of wood and lopes across the compound to confront the heroes.

Urgim and Grim Gorgson charge the giant while Alexa, Alane, Andreus and Falandar hang back. Alexa peppers the giant with bolts from her repeater crossbow. Falandar uses his longbow and Alane fires off several magic darts.

Andreus fires off a devastating volley of shots from his pistols, drops them and pulls out a second set and fires them too.

The giant hammers on Urgim and Grim Gorgson, critically injuring them.

Then Urgim strikes a massive killing blow (23 points of damage), the giant staggers and collapses, falling on top of Urgim and Grim Gorgson, injuring them further.

The party regroups and Alexa uses her healing skills to heal the injured. Andreus shares out some healing drafts as well.

The party then proceeds to loot the camp. They recover over a 1000GC worth of gold and loot before heading off to free the captives...

GM Notes

• The map was created with AutoRealm a fantastic and free application for creating maps
• Poor Urgim had almost a 1000xp that he couldn't used as he need to kill a giant to progress his career of giant slayer. The mining camp seemed like a good way of working one in.

To the rescue...again

A day or so of travel sees the party working their way long a forest lined road. Suddenly arrows fly out from either side of the road. Alane takes a hit, one bounces off the heavily armoured Urgim and the others miss. Falandar jumps off his mule and draws his bow. Urgim turns his mule into the forest and charges, Andreus does the same but on the opposite side of the road. Alexa dismounts and follows Andreus. Cloaking herself in magic Alane sneaks into the forest and locates one of the attackers. She succeeds in sneaking up to the cloaked human and promptly slits his throat. Urgim in meanwhile has located a second attacker and is whaling on him. Falandar takes a hit from an arrow and decides to play possum on the road. On the other side of the road Andreus and Alexa engage the 3rd and 4th attackers in combat.

The combat is short lived, the bandits being no match for the heroes. Falandar sees a 5th bandit take to the woods and Alane manages to hit him with a magic dart but he continues to run away deeper into the woods. The group decides not to follow, loot the corpses and continue on down the road.

A couple of hours later Andreus & Urgim hear someone crying in the bushes alongside the road. Heading into the woods they find a small human child. Coaxing the boy back to the road they hear his tale of woe. His family farm was attacked and overrun by bandits and his family captured. Many of his neighbours suffered the same fate. The boy managed to escape the bandit's camp a few days ago and has been wandering the wood since.

Alexa loudly declares that party should just leave the boy behind and that they cannot stop for  every snivelling brat they find. The rest of the party disagrees and they decide to see if they can rescue the boy's family. Alexa follows reluctantly.

Several hours later, the party finally tracks down the bandits camp. A quick recon turns up two guards, 8 other bandits pottering around the camp and a wooden pen holding 20 beaten and down trodden captives.
Once again Alane uses her magic to sneak up and dispatch the guards and the rest of the party swarm the camp. Once again the bandits fall quickly to heroes.

As they free the captives from the pen (and reunite the boy with his family) a man charges Alane and tries to strangle her, all the while ranting about the party spoiling his plan to free his family from the mine. Alexa pries the man off Alane and he takes off into the woods.

The captives explain that they were been taken to work on a mine that was run by the bandits and that the man wanted to be captured so that he could get into the camp to try free his family.

The party loot the bodies and discover that the bandits had a large number of gold nuggets and coin amongst them. Intrigued by this the party decides that perhaps they should investigate the mine...to rescue the slaves of course.

The captives arm themselves with the bandits discarded weapons and equipment and shuffle off into the woods making their way home.

You are our last, best hope...

An entire week of camping in the old woman's clearing, sees the party regaining their strength. All healed they set off west to reach Milo's rendezvous point.

After a half days hike through the woods they reach the edge of the woods. Stretched out before them is a bush filled plain. In the far distance they can make out the walled town of Sommeville. Closer by is a small hill with a ruined watchtower on top. This is the rendezvous point.

The party approaches the hill and locate a worn path carved into the hill. They also notice carrion birds circling the hill top. Alane cloaks herself in magic and goes ahead to scout. She finds signs of a viscous fight and beastmen corpses are strewn round the base of the ruined tower. Inside the ruined tower (one of its 4 walls has collapsed) she spies a staff stuck in the rubble with a piece of white cloth tied to its top.

Alane fetches the rest of the party who start to investigate the hill top. Paranoid that the beastmen may rise from the dead Grim Gorgson and Alexa start decapitating and de-legging the corpses. Alane having detected magic around the staff is eyeing it up cautiously when Urgim pushes forward and tries to grab the staff.

As his hand nears the staff a ghostly figure of an older man in robes rises from the rubble and says:

Well met,

We have been forced to leave, the forces of chaos were growing too numerous. Milo has entrusted you with the most precious and dangerous thing in this world. Alas my brothers and I are now no longer able to relieve you of this burden.

You will have to be the ones who destroy it and save our world.

The box must be taken to the Plain of Bones and thrown into the rift that has formed there. This will seal the rift. If this is not done and the rift is allowed to grow then chaos will gush into this world and all will be lost.

Under no circumstances open the box. The power unleashed will merely feed the rift and rip our world asunder. The power of the box must be released on the far side of the rift to seal it.

We will attempt to distract chaos. Hopefully your small band can make its way unnoticed to the rift.

Take this cloth its markings will show you the way.

Good luck. Hopefully we will meet again.

Urgim backs away and waits for the others to gather. They quickly determine that the message is triggered whenever they are near the staff. Grim Gorgson takes the cloth with its magical marker, which appears to always point in a particular direction and and wraps it around his wrist.

Alexa destroys the staff to ensure that no one else sees the message.

Taking up the grave mission thrust upon them party then makes their way to Sommeville to resupply. The farmer's market is on and the group splits up to buy supplies. Alexa and Grim Gorgon also acquire a supply of holy water from the church for a small donation.

Enquiring about buying mules and horses they are informed that old man Jenkins has some for sale and his farm is a few hours south of the town.

Since it is late the party decides to take advantage of civilization and spend the night in the local inn. Urgim and Grim Gorgson share one room, Alane & Alexa another and Andreus & Falandar share a third.

In the middle of the night Grim Gorgson awakes to find a cold blade pressed to is throat and a cloaked figure looming over him. The figure demands in a whisper that Grim Gorgson hand over the box. Grim Gorgson refuses loudly, which wakes Urgim. With the intruder momentary distracted by Urgim, Grim Gorgson attempts to grapple him. This fails and Grim Gorgson receives a nasty slash.

Urgim leaps up and grapples the intruder throwing him to the ground. Grim Gorgson then proceeds to stake the intruder's hand to the floor, with one of his vampire stakes, in an attempt to get the intruder to talk. The intruder promptly starts screaming.

Woken by the screaming, Alexa and Alane leap out of bed (Alexa wearing some rather skimpy night clothes by all accounts). Alexa grabs her axe and flings open their room door, surprising a second intruder. Reacting first, Alane blasts the second intruder with a magic dart, doing critical damage and knocking him to ground. Alexa pins him to the ground and demands to know who he his. The intruder merely smiles and then starts to convulse, after a few seconds he goes limp, apparently dead. A think oily black substance leaks from his clenched jaws.

Another scream (as Grim Gorgson stakes the first intruder's other hand) causes Alexa and Alane to rush towards the boy's room. Alexa bashes down the door with a mighty axe blow.

Unfortunately before the party can further interrogate the intruder he too convulses and dies with a thick black liquid dribbling from his lips.

By this time the other patrons of the inn and the constabulary arrive to found out what is going on. The party claim ignorance and bamboozle their way out of town to avoid any tricky questions.

With the sun rising they take the road south and head to old man Jenkin's farm. A few hours later and after a brisk negotiation, the party is equipped with two mules and a pair of ponies.

Saddling up the party continue southwards...

GM's Notes

• Falandar's and Andreus' players were not at the game so they did not feature that much in this episode.