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And then I get inspiration about a future adventure
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After a time, the characters come to the conclusion that they want to do something with their money. The ranger decides that he would like to donate money to the rebuilding of Neloar and the building of a shrine to his god. The Druid of Xeric likes that idea and wants to build a temple to Xeric. The Warrior thinks that helping the Orphans on the street of Jarda is a good goal and is looking on how to do that, but not trusting the Duke to do that. The Half-Elf decides that the opportunity to invest in the Foaming Mug was a good thing passed by and decides to do it anyways, dropping some coin to clean it up and restock it.
Those that dropped money on the poor get a blessing of Hestium upon them right away, They get to choose a failed saving throw in the future to succeed and take no damage.
The party then decided that they needed to vanquish the rest of the Temple of Elemental Evil so they set out to pick up their fellow player who had been training at the Tower of the First One. He was now an initiate to a new career as a Warlock. He learned a lot of esoteric things, most of which meant no sense to him, but he was made to learn to open himself up to a ring that was given to him that was to be his focus for casting spells. It was also a focus that allowed him to sense magic and more importantly identify magical items. The First One sent him on his way to find a powerful artifact, a Golden Orb.
When the party announced their intentions to travel to Nulb, the Lord Gerald, Count of Hommlet, sent a detachment of soldiers with the group to show Nulb that the party members were important to the Crown and not to be set upon. Then the townsfolk seeing this as an expedition with free armed guards, those that had future business in Nulb decided that this was a prime opportunity to travel in safety, so they joined. Latest of the arrivals was the owners of the trading post, they closed up shop and decided to accompany the characters to pick up supplies for the store.
Korin headed out first so that he could tell his shadow to stay low, as an Orc, the Duke's Men would see him as a spy. Korin was a head of the group when he encountered a boulder sitting out in the middle of the road. He was about a hundred yards from the boulder, but thought it suspicious as there was only forest near by and they had passed by here only a week before and saw no boulder. He reported this back to the rest of the party. They approached looking for trouble.
Meanwhile, the leaders of the temple were in a fury that they had been attacked with impunity and the outer defenses breached and turned asunder. They contacted their spies and soon discovered that there was a group of raiders and they had left a trail. They picked through the detritus of their passing and formulated a plan to deal with these interlopers. A plan was developed, an ambush along the road that the raiders had to follow to get back to Nulb and e temple. Their agents were to accompany the adventureers and try to assassinate them when the confusion of battle decsended. The leaders contacted a mage and his body guard that controlled the operations outside the temple and sent five bugbears, a giant, and a troll to accompany them when they ambushed the players. The Mage had recruited a force of twenty-eight bandits. They were to exit the forest from a hiding spot and attack the players. The Mage drew some Explosive Runes on the roadway and covered them with dust, leaves and fallen branches. The runes exploding was meant to be the signal to attack, then the Mage would send an illusion of himself out to goad the hot-headed Paladin out to attack the illusion, then the hill giant and the troll would gang up and kill the paladin and the mage would throw fireball and lightning upon the rest of the party, using phantasmal killer to attack the other players, before fleeing with the assassin bodyguard and the troll and hill giant. The Mage was to cast wall of force to stop pursuit.
Back to the party…
The Paladin seeing the boulder in the road decided that this time he would charge forth to get to the boulder, tripping the Explosive Runes spell and setting off the explosion that looked just like a fireball. The men-at-arms accompanying him all died instantly, his mount, the holy Giant Goat was left with one hit point and a couple characters got singed. The civilians acted with terror at the explosion, the traders tried to take control of their cart, but it rolled over. The bushes to either side erupted as six bandits jumped out from each side and seven attacked from the front side and another five bugbears from the other front side to converge on them, they sprinted to close with the party, the overturned cart and the farmers abandoned teams and carts blocking their retreat. Twelve archers with crossbows took aim from the fringes of the wood.
The Druid was the first to react and she strode forth ready to cast a spell. She thought an Ice Storm would stop the ambush and turn the tables quickly, but of one thing. The traders in Hommlet had different ideas, they were secret cultists of the Temple. One was an assassin and the other was merely a high level rogue. The over turned cart provided good cover and blocked the character's escape. The assassin fired his crossbow with its poisoned quarrel at the Druid, the arrow passed right through her chest killing her nearly instantly; she hit the ground unconscious. The Rogue fired his crossbow at the paladin hoping to take a damaged foe completely out of the fight, the quarrel peirced his armour and he was close to death in just a few heart beats. The rest of the party stunned by the quick turning of fortunes turned from the rushing bandits and tried to find the source of the rain of feathered death. Vistra the Dwarf jumped onto the side of the cart and cut down at the crouching assassin with her Frostbrand and Korin did likewise with bow in hand and tried to kill the Rogue. Unhurt, but in the middle of the converging forces the bard warlock chose to flee away from the ambush, the low level Cleric of Xeric was ignored the initial attack and the Druid was bleeding out. The paladin summoned the healing Power of Scoria and healed himself before the troops took him down. Ignored the Grave Cleric of Xeric prayed and lay her hands on her former mentor's crumpled body and healed her before retreating before the soldiers. The druid's eyes fluttered open. The fleeing Half elf cast hypnotic pattern on half of the archers and a wing of attacking men.
Still it looked like the party was going to be wiped out in this small battle, even before the main and powerful magical attacks had begun, but as if fate had chosen to smile on the party the Hill Giant forgot the battle plan and had run out to pick up the boulder and reeled his arm back to lob it into the party. The Druid stood up and cast her spell, a dark cloud formed over the ambush site and sleet began to rain down on the group, she then leaned over and assumed the form of a large cave bear. The assassin died under the relentless attacks of the Dwarf and the rogue from the archer. The icy conditions did their job on the attackers and they slipped and slid, standing up only to fall again. The only ones in the initial ambush unaffected by the sleet were the ones that were affected by the hypnotic patterns. There were a few the continued to act be they quickly died. The hill giant, whose only joy in life was throwing boulders decided that this is what he should do anyways even though he could not see any targets. So every round a rock would drop at random into the melee and kill one of the combatants, usually one of his allies. The hot headed Paladin decided to break cover and attack the Giant. He must have thought all the bugbears and bandits hit by rocks meant he was a bad shot, he wasn't. And he was hit by two rocks as he charged the giant's position. The Mage also attacked him with Phantasmal Killer and he believed that he was shrinking, his fear of getting shorter. The rest of the ambushes handled the part began to move as a group on the hill giant when the Mage revealed himself and the party tried to kill him with directed spell fire. Fearing his life he cast his escape spells and fled the scene the Assassin became invisible and fled as well the troll that was waiting in the wings came out to attack and they cast fire at him and he ran. The Hill Giant, was considered irreplaceable by the leadership, died. But the Mage acquired valuable information about the party. Including that they were coming back soon.
Next session back into the temple.
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Eyes of players go no further
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It did occur to me that there are some monsters that the party skipped over on the first level are still alive and the party did nothing to remover the bodies of the creatures they killed, which means any of the ghasts might create more ghouls with the body parts and any of the clerics with animate dead and animate dead ritual has a lot of raw resources available in the first two levels. This means the Blessing of Xeric will come back into play
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