Right at the beginning of last week's game the GM informed us that we would be in the city for some time prior to the start of the adventure and would have plenty of time to take care of any business we might have. I immediately made inquiries into purchasing some chain mail armor. It took some haggling, but eventually I was able to purchase a set, albeit for a bit more than it was worth. My group made some other acquisitions as well, with both clerics upgrading their armor, and the group pitching in to buy the Elf a Longbow that he claimed he was very skilled in using. As it turns out we never got to witness his alleged prowess... more on that in a bit.
The adventure we played was an old one from Dragon magazine, but I'm not sure which issue or the name of the adventure. It basically consisted of someone holding some very powerful fireball spells in stasis inside of rubies and hiding them all over the city. The person then sent us a note explaining that there were seven scattered though and we must figure out the riddles which served as clues to the seven hiding places or many innocent people would die. It sounded a whole lot like Die Hard with a Vengeance to me.
We began following the riddles that were to serve as our clues to each of the seven gems. We found them all, save one, with about 20 minutes of time to spare. It was a timed adventure so when I say 20 minutes I mean 20 minutes of real time. The final clue led us to a candy maker's shop. We searched the basement and thought we had found the last gem, but it turned out to be a fake. It did open up an underwater tunnel, however, so we sent the Elf in to investigate.
We tied a rope to him and sent him down, but he eventually had to untie himself to reach the end of the tunnel. What happened to him after that is a little hazy for me. My character wasn't there, and I tend to zone out when that happens, basically because I don't want to know anything my character doesn't know. I don't want to be tempted to act on any information I might pick up, I'm not fond of metagaming. The basic gist of it was that Kaliban (we all just call him "The Elf") faced the final riddle on his own and actually did quite well. He solved it in enough time to return to the street carrying the gem. When it started to glow and grow hot it was obvious what was about to happen. The table went silent and then suddenly burst out with screams of "THROW IT!!!" After clarifying his options with the GM, Christian (who plays Kaliban) picked up his dice and prepared to meet his fate.
As it turned out his fate was to critically fumble.
Even given the disaster he might have survived if not for his hit point total. He was at full hit points, but unfortunately old Kaliban maxed out at a not-so-stellar 14HP. Alas, the poor Elf was dead.
The rest of us were faced with trying to figure out what happened and with investigating another explosion a few blocks away. The second explosion turned out to be at the prison, where a jail break was in progress. It seems the criminal we had arrested the week previous, and one of his confederates, were in the process of finishing off the last of the prison guards and making a break for it.
Finally, a fight!
I moved straight to engage to leader who seemed to be both more skilled and better armed. I took a few hits, but nothing major. My shiny new set of Chainmail protected me well enough and we were able to dispatch both criminals without any more party members dying. We collected our reward and called it for the evening.
Oh and Christian finished his new character. Another Elf... I wonder what we'll call this one.
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