We left off last session in the Temple of Auristra, just finished fighting the cleric and the monks. They were dead and there was a strange aura around the Dwarven Fighter. There were four doors out of the main temple location and they decided to explore the ground floor with the intent to find the high priest and anyone else in the temple, than to loot the valuables.
The Druid decided that a white rat, might be best to help determine if there were people on the other side of the doors, as they have a good sense of smell. She sniffed at all e doors before they were opened and determined which ones were sleeping quarters and which were not and which might have people inside. They did that for each door on the lower level. They systematically searched the lower level for the high priest and more people, but found it bare. They discovered the kitchen, a sitting room, the Monk's cells, and the dining room. There was a couple locked doors and they found the keys on the priest. They were her rooms. There was a hallway that contained ten treasures, golden statuary of the Goddesses purview. They were detailed and made of solid gold and worth about 5000 gold coins apiece. at the end of the hall they discovered a door and behind them a set of stairs leading up. With another door beyond.
The white rat listened at the doors and smelled underneath. She did not smell anyone underneath or hear a thing, but she did smell something, odd. The bard pretending to be the younger Cleric poked his head into the room without speaking the password of the room. Eight Skeletons moved off the wall and moved toward the door, intent on cutting the party up into tiny pieces. Phil the Half-Orc Cleric of Stromida went into the room first proudly presenting his holy symbol and projecting the force of his goddess, "Begone, in the name of Stromida!" and half the skeletons ran as far away as the room would allow. Four of the skeletons moved to engage the group. The warriors in the group charged forth and fought them. The archer fired his bow into them. And the little rat charged them turning into a very large mastiff and she snapped at the undead bones. After many lunges and feints the group managed to bring down the last of the four undead. They ten moved to the four cowering in the corner and one by one they brought each of them down, only sustaining minor wounds, except for the druid who was cut down as a mastiff and reverted to her Elven form.
The next room they entered was a Libray and they did not see anyone there. The bard was getting frustrated and rushed into the next room and seeing there was nothing there he lead the party into the next room without searching the room at all, which it turned out was a mistake that he would soon learn to regret. He passed into the next room and saw that it was a torture chamber with several pine boxes stacked in the corner. He continued it not the room and that is when three Goblins jumped out and surprised the party. They drew weapons and began to fight. Three goblins vs six characters was going to be a short fight, even with a little surprise on the side of the goblins. The second round they discovered that there was another three goblins right behind the others, so this was more of an even fight than they thought it might be. And they discovered that the goblins had bottled the characters up in the corridor a bit. With the noise of the battle the characters in the back did not here the door open behind them and the last goblins attacked from behind.
There was one last surprise waiting for the group. The High Priest, alerted by the battle with the skeletons, was waiting in the next room when the battle began. He cast a silence spell on a coin and threw it amongst the party. There was confusion in the ranks with the six then four goblins in the front and three then two goblins in the back. One of the goblins hit the cleric and as an acolyte to the Storm goddess a thunderous rebuke blasted the goblin to smithereens. As the last of the goblins were killed in the back that hidden cleric cast a Spiritual Weapon spell and a warhammer appeared in the air near e characters, but since he cleric could not see any of the party members, the weapon only hovered in the air menacingly. The bard kneeled on the ground and stopped up the silenced coin and threw it against the far wall. The goblins were eventually overwhelmed and two retreated away from the party to form a screen for the cleric. The ranger skirted the Spiritual Weapon and fired his bow at e priest whom he now saw. His arrow struck him on his upper body; he was surprised to see the high priest was a halfling! The Paladin and the fighter moved up and fought the last goblins and the bard ducked into the room that the goblins were using to see if he could get behind the cleric. The rest charged the Cleric.
The cleric in full retreat ran through a zig zag corridor and cast a Darkness spell on the corridor. They proceeded into the darkness, in a corridor they did not know the demensions of, there was some bruising and some bumping before they found their way out of the darkness. The first one through the darkness got a nice attack by the cleric with the spiritual warhammer. It was the gnome and the attack went high. The cleric crossed the room that was his apartment and entered the secret door that he had ajar. The door closed and locked. The halfling barred it from the other side.
The characters, minus the Bard still looking for a way in behind the Cleric, not knowing there was no way, began looking for a way to open e secret door. It did not take them long but they discovered that the door was stuck, so the quick witted Gnome told the others to use his hard head as a battering ram to knock the door open. It succeeded! The door opened the characters rushed into the room and found the High Priest trying to open a trap door in the floor to escape. The room was filled with really bad rock statues and a large cage with a young listless girl in it. She was pretty beneath the bruises and cuts on her face and body that showed through her rags. When she saw the part coming to her rescue she reached out to the bad priest, who had abused her, and pulled him upright and tried to strangle him. Some of the characters, I won't name ased if the girl was pretty and I told them that they thing she was fourteen. The priest was killed shortly after that. The girl was released and she kicked the halfling priest's corpse hard.
With the help of the girl, they identified the treasure and began looking for more treasure. They looted the High Priest's possessions and began to look for loot in the rest of the temple. The girl told them that the treasure chest was just emptied and sent to the main Temple. They then thought to take the ten gold Statues in the hallway, but then they thought that since the temple staff had not looted them, they might be trapped, so the left them be. In the under priest's room they discovered a trap door leading into the basement and it lead to a door. They opened the door and saw a group of corridors there and then they began to discuss whether they should continue, as they were all out of spells and heavily wounded. They decided that since they had this girl with them they should leave. As they were discussing this the monster was not going to have any of this. The ogre had been starved and fed only occasionally, so it saw a chance of fresh an plentiful food so it rushed the party hoping to have some tastiness. The party threw their javelins and the ranger fired his bow, the others launched their attacks and cut the beast down. That was enough!
The next morning they had recovered from their ordeal and felt stronger for it. They had an inpromptu meeting with the uncharmed village folk and they wer given a magic item that might help them with the next stage of the fight, a wand of Dispel Magic with four charges. They resupplied the best they could and went out to the Temple where the Snake god lived. The Rogue that they captured from before promised to give them a map of the temple, as much as he knew and of how to get there. The maps that he gave them did not show where the captives were kept, not did it show where the treasure was kept. It was not a complete map either, but it was better than nothing.
They headed out right away, as the journey would take a whole week, nine days. * I got the players to each roll three d12s I told them that an 11 or a 12 was an encounter. They all rolled low, the highest roll was a 10 and for me that means they had a near encounter.* As they were moving thought the trail the ranger out in front scouting, the ranger noticed a bunch of tracks crossing their path. He decided that he wanted to see how many orcs were there and where they were going, so he made a mark on the tree and went off after them. The party following behind missed the tracks and the mark that he made. He caught up to the Orcs quickly and determined that they numbered 9. He followed them until they camped for e night and he waited for them to go to sleep.
Meanwhile, the rest of the party followed the trail and found a camp site around dark and could not see the Ranger. So they turned around and went looking for him. Looking more closely they found the tracks that they missed earlier and the sign that the ranger went to follow. It was then they heard a horn blow a few times off to the East. A minute later they heard three answering calls from three different directions, and they wondered if the Ranger had gotten them all killed.
The ranger, climbed a tree and waited until there were only two sentries. He then fired his bow, surprising them, hitting the first one and then the second one. The first had and arrow in the side but the second had an arrow in the throat. The first called an alarm, and the second spewed blood everywhere as it died. The ranger fired a second arrow into the first sentry and skewered him as it raised a horn to his lips and used his last breath to sound it. The other orcs were slow to rise and many of them suffered perforations before getting up. Two others started firing randomly their bows into the forest hoping to hit something while others blew their horns. They all died. The ranger joined up with the others and only had a slight nick from a random arrow. He also had a string of nine pairs of Orc ears for the bounty. The others were not pleased and they went looking for another camp site far from the converging Orcs.
When we left off they were outside the temple in the swamp. The entrance in the centre of dyke complex holding back the water, the entrance heading into the ground.
The original High Priest was a human and he had magic chainmail, but since the gnome was not going to be getting any magic items for a while being so shot, I decided to change the race of the cleric so his magic armour was gnome sized.
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