This is a game that my friends and I are playing on Saturdays (any saturday we can get together). This starts on week 20ish of playing (wow, has it really been that long... or that short?)

July 30th

The session started out benign enough: plans for a wedding (Arvinn and Devra), investigation into who would want to kill the king (Duke Edrick of Essex, the king’s brother - lazy enough to be controlled if Ty Raiden wanted to; and rumors of a daughter named Cassandra). The feelings began to change as a fight occurred which led to the death of a commoner (all they wanted was to talk to the “babe” (Sharna) strolling in the streets at night (they must not have noticed the human tank and wizard walking a few feet back - or didn’t care). The death led to the king’s mage’s being called out in the middle of the night (after all, there have been many assassination attempts on the king’s life) which led to the trail of Velof and Taliya (and Sharna, though she is only a 13 year old girl). Velof and Taliya were questioned by the king (seeing as they both work for him in one way or another) and asked to return the next day for sentencing. Neither had denied doing it and gave the king all of the information he needed (though accosting Sharna may have been a bit of an exaggeration).

The next day Arvinn and Devra were wed in the temple of Pelor. He gave her a golden ring as a profession of his love (ring of protection +1) and she had nothing to give him but herself (he thought that was well enough). Devra took Arvinn to a friend’s house (“she won’t mind if we use it, but we have to be out of it by nightfall”) so his friends wouldn’t be knocking on her door again in the middle of the night looking for Arvinn.

After returning to the king for sentencing, Velof is let go with the acknowledgment that the king can’t hinder Velof from his quest. Velof was then abruptly excused as the king turned to Taliya. Velof asked to stay, but the king explained that the words he was to have with Taliya didn’t need to have him present. Velof then waited outside the throneroom.

“Everything you do, whether or not you are in the robes representing my office, has an effect on me.” Those were the beginning of the king’s words with Taliya. He explained that he had every right to banish both her and her son (the whole reason she’s even in the capital), but he was afraid if he did, he would be ambushed by a few Grimalkins (smart cats) led by the one that had adopted her son. He then gave her a standing order that she can not willingly let a person die. She must try to help someone that is dying. She cannot outright kill someone that is dying. In other words, if it’s dead it’s too far gone for her to save, but if the person can be healed and saved, she is to try. She is to do it in his name and, who knows, the people might decide to expand his kingdom for him. She is also required to adopt one of the kittens of his wife’s Grimalkin (Grizwell) so, if nothing else, he has a spy in their midst. He then allows her to leave. Taliya chooses the runt of the litter of Grimalkins.

Velof returns to the throneroom asking what or who had talked to the king about his quest. King Alexander explained that he had been honored by a visit by a “higher being” and it would be left at that. Velof nodded his understanding and left. Once outside, Velof and Taliya begin trying to find Glanur, but the weaponsmiths don’t remember seeing him, but one does mention a dwarf a couple days before that wanted something from the forge. Since they were so busy working on weapons for the king (there had been a couple of assassination attempts remember) they had sent the dwarf on his way. If the dwarf was wanting to make weapons he would have had to find a forge that had hot enough flame so the weaponsmith told them to check the armor shops or blacksmiths. They did, but both of those turned up nothing.

After dinner they checked again, but neither of them found anything. That night, Velof was visited in a dream by Valen again.

"The quest is important. Have you forgotten? You can't wait much longer. Your people, your country cries for you. Can you feel it?"

Velof feels a pain in his chest. "There has only been a slight delay. I have made ready this party for depature in the morning and will do all I can to keep that time!
"Any delay can mean failure. Your brother continues his decimation even as we talk. Thousands die each day. You MUST leave tomorrow."

Velof gets up after the dream and, unable to sleep, goes looking for Glanur again. Eventually he follows a pinging sound and happens upon a cooper’s where Glanur is working on a large metal item. Velof waits until Glanur is done chanting (interrupting a spellcaster is always a bad thing) and quickly gets his attention. Velof informs him that they are leaving in the morning. Glanur nods and decides to sleep with his back up against the anvil.

The next day comes, Velof gets the new horse tender (Soltahr - hired for 2sp/day - around 14 years old) and the new torchbearer (Deray Gates - hired for 1 sp/day - around 17 years old, but knows how to use a sword and wear armor. Common phrase: “yes, sir”) and tells them to be ready in 10 minutes and meet at the horses. After meeting, they leave.

Except for a brief encounter with 2 Ogres, nothing much happens on the way to the desert. They decide to camp as much on the edge of the desert as possible before beginning their travels by night while sleeping during the day. This, of course, means Vanzetta will be the Nightmare and Marie will be the woman, though he is able to douse areas of his fire so she is able to ride him.

The first night, they are set upon by jackals, though the battle is semi-easily won without the loss of horses. A couple days later, a duneworm almost has Arvinn’s horse for lunch. They also skirt around a large cactus and an Iron Thorn tree. When they meet the Marruspawn, jackalwarriors that seem only to be watching them, they become extremely cautious as they get off their horses. Taliya’s psuedodragon lets her know there are 5 more that they cannot see in the heat mist straight ahead. One of those walks towards them - no weapons drawn, though they are strapped across his back. He talks to them and afterwards invites them (more like says “come with me, you will dine with us”) to their lair.

Dinner seems to be a relative of the DuneWorm and while eating they talk about being “chosen” and the Marruspawn being the chosen protectors of history. Marat (the leader that has been talking to them) seems to know a lot more about Valen and the history of the items they’re looking for than they’ve been able to find out anywhere else. He offers to take them to the ruins after realizing they are probably the chosen ones: though they are missing a demon and a celestial. It doesn’t matter much as the door will not open.

As they are to leave the next night, Marat is told that the party has been followed. Marat orders his men to capture the follower. About ½ hour after getting started, the Marruspawn have collapsed the caverns they were using as a home. They will be homeless nomads after this is done. As they continue on their task, one of Marat’s men comes up from behind the group and tells Marat that the person they were to capture escaped. Marat seems a bit upset. Arvinn asks how the man was dressed and Marat explained much like a mummy except darker clothes. Arvinn figures it’s one of Ty’s men. He explains to Marat that they have something he wants and points to Sharna. Marat says he doesn’t see the significance - would this Ty Raiden kill many men to have her? Arvinn says yes. Marat still doesn’t see what’s special about Sharna, but she is human, he is Marruspawn.

Nothing attacks the large army as they head to the ruins. A large door stands in what looks to be a large sand dune. Upon finding no writing around the door, Taliya casts detect magic and notices the writing (in magic) around the door (also the door itself is magical). “Only the chosen can enter. Human, Elf, Dwarf, Ogre, Celestial.” Glanur pushes open the door and enters. Velof goes to enter right behind him, but he is stopped. As he growls and grumbles a bit, Taliya enters, then Amikarr, Arvinn and Dravan. The door closes abruptly behind them just as Dravan gets in the room. It is a small room, large enough for them though and it is magically lit, making Taliya hesitant about using detect magic. Everyone searches for secret doors and some find them, but they can’t find a way to open them. They don’t just push open. Glanur and Amikarr switch doors, but they still don’t open with a push, so they search again and find more doors. Arvinn also finds a door. The doors Glanur and Amikarr find don’t open for them, but when they switch doors, Amikarr’s door opens when he puts his hand on it.

Taliya casts detect magic and is able to read which doors each person needs to go into and tells them. Each of them finds themselves in a small room. All but Dravan search for a secret door. Amikarr finds his and upon opening it (no magic needed) finds a long hallway. He realizes that the floor is not really there and there is no way to run and jump, though there is a ledge 50' away. He takes out his spider climb potion, drinks it, and scurry’s across the wall to the ledge.

Glanur opens up his door and finds the passage abruptly shortens to dwarf height. While a human probably COULD get through, it would be difficult.

Taliya opens up her door and finds a hallway that is less wide than most. Any but an elf would not easily make it through. A human would have difficulties, but it would not be impossible. A dwarf or Ogre would probably not make it.

Arvinn opens up his door and there is nothing but a 50' hallway in front of him. Nothing special.

Dravan waits... and waits. Finally, tired of standing in a 6' by 6' hole in the wall, he punches through the wall that should be a door for him. Beyond the wall is another wall. Beyond that, another. He punches through 10 walls (his hand’s a bit sore) before he enters into the room that all the others are in.

In the room is a pedestal On the pedestal is.. Nothing. Everyone searches the pedestal but finds nothing. Just as everyone is about to search the room, Amikarr looks up, where he notices two boots with wings on the ceiling. Still under the spider climb effect, Amikarr climbs up and grabs the boots. Upon hitting the ground, he quickly puts them on before anyone can say anything.

There are protests, but Amikarr claims he is the chosen one - he “had a dream that told me so” - and must have all the items to complete the task in his dream.

They are able to find a door that leads out and around, past the trials and to the door they first entered.

August 6th

The Marruspawn are willing to take the PC’s to the southwest corner of the desert (20 days) which would be the location in the desert closest to where they’ve said they need to go. After getting there, the PC’s see the lines and lines of Gannon’s solders and realize there is no way to get through the line so they’ll have to go around. Discussion is had about how to get around and the realization that they could take a ship and get behind the advancing army dawns on them. The decision is made to go north (there is a port capital in the northern country). The Marruspawn travel with them another 20 days to get to the northern part of the desert. As they get far enough beyond the desert, they begin to see snow as it is the winter months. They come upon a village a couple of days later where they are able to buy winter gear for traveling. A day outside of that village they are attacked by a Babau and an Arrow Demon. The elf is able to banish them with Laecron - the lance of Valen.

Glanure, the dwarven cleric, decides to return to the village south to finish the weapon he had begun in the capital. He said he would then meet them at the capital (there’s a port he can get to that can get a boat down the river to a spot near the capital). Vanzetta decides that he cannot help with this part of their adventure and he doesn’t like having Marie in so much harms way, so he, Marie and Squire Mark will be heading back to the capital themselves. This does give the PC’s an extra horse as Squire Mark will not be able to take his with him.

This leaves the party with 6 PC’s and 3 NPC’s:
General Velof Feren (human)
Taliya (elf, spellcaster)
Arvinn (human)
Draven (half ogre)
Amikarr (elf, archer)
Ulden (human)

For those not part of the game that's reading this, I don't really use classes, I just have spellcaster and archer listed here because 1: spellcasters are unique and should be mentioned 2: 90% of the time, Amikarr is going to use a bow - it'd be higher, but he does have that lance...

NPC’s
Sharna (13 year old girl, daughter of Barget of the Restful Knight’s Inn, supposed to be married to Ty Raiden - she doesn’t want to marry him and Velof is helping her not marry him)
Soltahr (14 year old kid, horsetender)
Deray Gates (17 year old, torchbearer, trained with swords and armor)

It takes the PC’s 10 days to get up to the port city to try and find a ship. Taliya has become more used to the group and no longer tries to hide the fact she’s a spellcaster (she casts much more than she used to - which is great for the group to take out large numbers of low level creatures).

In the port city, Velof goes to try and find a captain and a ship. Once he’s mentions he’s headed west to the island with the Volcano on it, the man talking to him laughs. “You’ll only find one captain that might be crazy enough to take you that way.” Asking who that captain is, he’s given the name Mad Dog Salty and the place to find him at: go to the seediest part of town and find the seediest tavern - that’s where he’ll be. So Velof heads off.

Arvinn writes a note home to his wife (does not mention Velof for safety reasons) and decides he needs to find someone to take it with them. Amikarr goes with him to the wharf (they’ve missed Velof) where Arvinn’s first given the price of 50 gold. Sure that there are many boats heading east, Arvinn continues to look for a boat that would be cheaper. He finally finds one willing to take it for 10 gold. So he settles with that.

Back at the seediest inn in the seediest part of town, General Velof has decided to pick a fight. It all started with him watching a couple of guys arm wrestle and he decides to take on the winner. The guy wins and, because of some random comment made about Velof’s abilities, Velof hits him. Of course the guy stands up and hits him back, but Velof is able to punch him out before too long (Velof is in his armor, the other guy has no armor). But, arm wrestling guy has friends and they proceed to interfere. Velof is able to get another knocked out before a man wearing an apron steps between them and breaks them up. He asks who started this and Velof points to the guy on the floor that he’d arm wrestled with. The cook tells the guy’s friends to take him and not come back (not that he believes Velof, but he knows those guys are trouble). Velof then goes and sits down across the table from the man he came to see: Mad Dog Salty.

After a brief talk about Mad Dog’s reluctance to head west because the waters are controlled by evil Lord Gannon’s “pets”, Velof makes reference to Mad Dog’s cowardice. Mad Dog has the sense to not be pushed into action by Velof’s speech and fully decides that he’s had enough of him. He may be crazy, but he isn’t stupid. Velof threatens to spread the information of Mad Dog’s cowardice to everyone on the wharf, but Mad Dog doesn’t budge. Velof’s handled the man wrong and he’s not going to do it.

Velof returns to the wharf, searching for another captain that may take them west, but the man just laughs at him. “If Mad Dog ain’t crazy enough to take ye, yer not going to find someone crazier.” Velof heads back to the Rusty Anchor Tavern to talk to his comrades.

As he’s explaining the problem of no captain and no boat, a woman’s voice speaks up. “You say you’re going West? I might know a ship that can take you.” Try as he might, Velof doesn’t piss this captain off enough to refuse good money. The offer is 50 gold per person, no horses, no animals. She needs to ride light if she’s going to make it in those waters. She does ask if one of them is “The Chosen One” because she lost her last ship to one of them and doesn’t plan on doing it again. She explains that Lord Gannon has made a pact with a golden dragon and the dragon’s minions guard the costlines. In fact, normally the first sign of an attack is when the ports are taken out. About 1 to 2 weeks later, the foot soldiers will be at the town to destroy it. “So, the fact we have a port here means Gannon won’t be here for another couple weeks at least.” She also mentions that the waters near the island they’re going to seem to be heavily infested with monsters as if guarding something. And if the ancient warhammer is located there, that is probably why.

Plans are made to set off the next day.

Note: I seem to be missing a week. I'll put it up here when I find it. If this seems a bit vaguer than the ones above, that is because I wrote it nearly a week after the events. My mind is a terrible thing to wait.

(Basically what happens in the missing week is the join up with the crew, find out their pirates. The stop at the pirate island where an offer is made by the woman captain to the PC's about joining her group - they decline. The captain doesn't seem too upset as a couple days later all of them head out again supposidly towards the volcano island. On the way there, the pirates stop off to kill a giant polar bear to restock their food. While they're gutting the bear, the PC's are attacked by a group of... something (don't remember what). When they finish with the battle, they find that the pirates have already left and are rowing their way back to the boat. Amikarr ends up killing the captain and the first mate. With help the rest of the pirates are dispatched so now the PC's have the boat which they find is ladden with booty, but they're not well trained in seafaring so it takes them a couple more months than it should to get to the volcano island.) September 3rd

It started with the adventurers stepping off the longboat onto the island of lava. The island itself is hardened lava, but being located in the frigid north, the air is quite chilly. So you are half burining, half freezing. Within 2 hours, a group of 18 Quasits attacked (those are demons that have poison). After all the Quasits were killed, two of the adventurers (Ulden and Dravan) were wounded enough where it was decided to return to the ship to recover (that took about a week of full bedrest for them to heal completely).

Returning to the island, the adventurers continued on their trek in the direction Taliya had pointed for being towards the biggest volcano. Passing the spot where they killed the Quasits, they noticed that the Quasits hadn't decayed as much as they should have in a week. Then again, as Arvinn pointed out, these aren't natural creatures, but they should have decayed more.

A few hours past the Quasits, some Dretch's (also demons) caught sent of the adventurers and began towards them. Luckily they started far enough away that the adventurers were able to take some of them out before they were reached - then the hand to hand began. The dretch's were dispatched.

I seem to remember that something occured during the night, though I can't quite remember what it was. I want to say either Bearded Devil or Chain Devil, but it matters very little as they were too easily dispatched.

The next day brought about the worst though. Upon travelling a couple of hours, an imp caught sight of the adventurers, looked as though he pointed at them just before he disappeared. Second later, a spider type creature (Bebilith - Poisonous Demon) burst from under some hardened lava and went to attack Sharna. Velof put himself between Sharna and the Bebilith which would prove to be his undoing. The battle commensed with each adventurer trying their best to kill the Bebilith, but it's shell was very strong keeping most of the damage at bay. The only true power seemed to be in Taliya's ability to cast a very powerful lightning bolts, but even then, three of them at max power didn't take the Bebilith out.

After the Bebilith attacked Velof twice, Velof fell to the ground. Immediately he was transported over to the only person that could possibly save him (Taliya), but she was too busy trying to finish off the Bebilith (a high concern now as it was coming towards her - note to Kristy: it had chosen Velof as its target and Taliya just happened to be there thanks to that teleport). The secondary effects of the Bebilith poison seeped in and Velof expired... and suddenly vanished.

(If you're interested in knowing what has happened to Velof, click here)

Having been taken down to very few hit points, the Bebilith plane shifted and left.

So the battle was won, though with major casualties - a dead party member that is missing, plus the fact he has the orb that's needed for the dragon. Whatever happened and will happen, he will have to be found if only to grab the orb from his dead corpse.

A man on horseback approaches the group. After a bit of talk, the adventurers are taken to a village that is located under some hardened lava (as I described it looks like it used to have a protecting shield which saved the village from being burned with the lava. There is no telling whether it is a protective shield over the village still or if it's just been replaced by the hardened lava.

The man that had been in charge of the group that brought the adventurers to the village was Mar'Amad. The village's name is Arisand. The man that was second in charge of the group was (I can't come up with his name right now and I'm too tired to get my notes), but both of them seem to want to help the adventurers as much as possible.

The group of adventurers are brought to see Aliand (I think her name is) the seer of the village. The room the adventurers are left in is a room of pillows and lots of other soft items to lay on. When she comes in, she is being helped and it is clear that she is blind. After some small conversations (like telling the 1/2 ogre that he doesn't trust them and him agreeing with her and a comment she makes about the fact there was supposed to be one more in the party) she makes a vague prediction of losing someone else in the group.

She (or perhaps Mar'Amad or the other guy) then tells the adventurers that the villagers will want to give them some things, but they may also find some things worthwhile in the village.

If you're into roleplaying like I am and feel you may need a bit of help, check out Roleplayingtips.com and RPGNOW.com. Use of both of these sights have helped my game immensely.