Chapter 2

Temple of Elemental Evil Storyboard – Chapter 2

[I’m realizing this game pulls no punches. The RNG (random number generator) is about as random as it can get and at level 1 you’re only a critical away from going down bleeding. Thank god for the bleeding rule to -9 because otherwise we would be losing people left and right. It actually feels something like fantasy Xcom on a difficulty level between normal and classic and coupled with the Ironman-mode, this should prove to be an entertaining story. I’m going to try and always have the basic party make-up of:

warrior (Stallen)

warrior (Karish)

thief (Eldiritch)

priest (Kumari)

mage (Xiamaru)

NPC-Add (Zert)

NPC-Add

NPC-Add

So, if someone does die, I will try and replace them with a similar class and use one of your old characters if you like. I’ll likely need to call on you to remember the details, but for now, if a tank dies, they will be replaced by one of Chris’ dwarves, but if the mage dies, I’ll want to replace with another mage-type.. maybe Karre? Or someone else who played a mage. Anyways, let’s hope no one dies and on to the adventure…]

* * * * *

We leave the inn and begin exploring the small village/hamlet meeting the townsfolk and embedding ourselves in their day to day routines along with their seemingly endless tasks. Speaking of tasks, we do quite a few of those, fetching this, delivering that, discovering that there are two main faiths here in town – the old faith of the druid and the new faith of the church of St. Cuthbert (Eldiritch hisses). During our weeklong stay in the town we help both sides of the faith convert some followers to the other and in so doing help nullify some petty feuds and squabbles among the hamlets villagers and farmers. We find the usual shops and surprised the place has almost one of each – a place to buy weapons and armor, and exclusive places to buy leather, gems and jewelry, clothing and cloaks, scrolls and potions, etc. We come across the beginnings of a castle that is being built for two higher-experienced adventurers that seem to have installed themselves as the towns ‘protectors’ with no resistance from the town itself. Rufus and Burne (a mage and warrior respectively) have lodged up in the towns watchtower as their castle is being built (presumably funded by the recent slaying of a green dragon and its subsequent hoard of loot.)

These two fill us in on the towns people and also give us our first major quest – investigate an abandoned moat house as recent bandit activity seems to emanate from it. Feeling a little too inexperienced to tackle such a quest now, we decide to explore the town more and see what else we can do to gear-up and become more experienced. In our exploration the town smith directs us to a woodcutter on the edge of town who gives us such a quest. He claims the Deklo grove has been infested with some spiders of larger than normal size…not too much unlike Rodents of unusual size. The wood at this grove is harder than usual (that’s what she said) and with the spiders occupation it leaves the 99% without their goods. Time to send in the 1% spider-evictors! We take on the quest and prepare for the worst. To the grove we go!

Immediately, we were beset upon by two giant spiders, but one stayed in his den, as if to see what would happen to the other one. A giant web flew out of the spiders’ anus and beyond smelling something foul wrapped many of our party in thick, sticky webs. It then advanced while Stallen and Kumari, free of the webs, moved around to flank it. It was near death when its pincers clamped down on our mage, Xiamaru, and in one bite poisoned and brought the poor guy to his knees and then unconscious and bleeding out.

Eldiritch, trapped in the webs, somehow snaked his short sword out and dealt the final blow to the beast just as Kumari cast a cure light wounds (clw) spell to stop the bleeding on Xiamaru. The web that was such a bother minutes before suddenly fell away just as the other spider advanced…aww crap! This time without the web it was on more even ground and we brought out our big guns – Karish the barbarian. Wielding his heavy 2-handed sword, Karish has come to be aptly nick-named ‘Death or Miss’. As he winds up and swings that beast of a weapon and with his massive strength, he either misses, or kills the foe outright and in this case he finished off the beast in one fell blow, however, not before Stallen was bit and poisoned and the rest of us were still wounded and mostly out of spells. We needed to sleep… but it wasn’t safe here. It was too far too risky going back and stumbling upon some monsters so we decided to sleep….bad choice.

Undead shambled into our camp, four of them, and we were hurting. Thank Kumari and the god of death she prays too because her rebuking of the dead saved the day…or in this case, the night and us. The undead cowered under her unholy symbol and attempted to flee, but not before we struck them from the flank or rear and turned them to dust. Most of our shard-edged weapons did no damage, but those with heavy strength or blunt weapons had no problem. We finally rested up and healed Xiamaru so he could walk and went (fled?) back to Hommlett. We succeeded in our quest and sought more. The woodsman directed us to another old adventurer in the town who acted as sort of the captain of the town guard. He told us a long story about a Marthel, a nobleman’s son who delved a little too much into the dark arts, and in so doing turned himself into a lesser undead creature. This ‘monster’ now controls a retinue of bandits and monsters and has been seen advancing on Hommlett. Time to save the town and intervene!

Before leaving, we picked up two more henchmen. [A real cool note about henchmen with this game. They truly our NPC’s and you can’t see their stats or even their true classes or their alignments. They take ‘shares’ of the loot and they are all different. Some take all scrolls (scribe-types), some want more than their share, etc. It’s pretty cool!] We picked up a man-at-arms named Raimol and a mage/sorcerer named Pishella. Now our party was eight strong and we set out to uncover and defeat this undead menace. About halfway there we were ambushed by bandits with a barbarian leader leading 4 crossbowmen. The barbarian leapt out from behind a rock and cut deep into our new mage, Pishella, who almost fell from a deep gash [a 12 hp blow! Ouch!].

Xiamaru begins chanting and after he’s done 2 of the crossbowmen and their raging barbarian leader crumpled to the ground asleep. The crossbowman up top was charged by Zert, our follower warrior and then flanked and finished off by a short sword stab in the side by Eldiritch. We loot the corpses and heal up Pishella and move out as it was unsafe there. By night we arrive …

We get in formation and move slowly through the bog, sometimes sending Eldiritch ahead to scout out as the rest of the party moves up. We come across a part of guards from Verbobanc…strange indeed way out here but then our quest benefactor did mention something about that city sending out a contingent of guards to investigate so not so unusual…

Stallen approaches their leader who is surprised to see us and exclaims there is nothing to see here and to go back the way we came. He insists on escorting us to whom we reply, ‘Nope, we’re here to check this out and your way out of your jurisdiction’ or close to it, pretty brave for a rag-tag group of ours to a unit of guards…maybe I embellish. Either way, after the third insisting demand and the third time denying them they all simply vanished into thin air… poof!

We advance and not long into the muck do we get advanced upon by a pack of kobolds. Karish ‘Death or Miss’ connects with a few and they go down in one blow as they often take two or more hits from the rest of us. Stallen breaks out the mandolin and strums a little diddy to encourage the ranks [this is the red glow all of us have – inspire courage +1 to hit and damage]and we go to town on the feral lizards.

We didn’t really get hurt during the melee and move ahead where we found an area of raised huts and ramshackle village of sorts Just as we approached the middle of it, the huts erupted with shrieks and cries as goblins came rushing forth. Thank god the troops were still inspired by the bards music as we quickly moved into a protective formation of the clothes casters and prepared for the worst. They kept coming!

This was our first really big fight and thank god it was against lowly goblins. It started off good until they kept coming and they were led by a goblin leader. Spell casters quickly went to work and slept some of them and another caster greased the ground causing many to fall down which were quickly dispatched by Eldiritch. Speaking of which, this thief, Eldiritch really shined this fight as he would dart in and out of combat and get flank attacks on many of these goblins with a couple causing critical hits and killing outright the goblins. Karish handled the goblin leader solo but raged and actually did 18 points to the guy in one swoop of his mighty sword. Stallen was more defensive and fought that way with shield and helped Eldiritch quickly dispatch the sleeping goblins and ones that fell in the grease. The followers did well too and provided defensive cover to the casters and dispatched some of their own too. After the battle was over we encountered one lone goblin who chose not to fight but instead help us – smart little fellow.

We were out of spells, tired, bruised, battered and bloody. We also looted all the fallen goblins and needed to sell. It was decided it would be best to return to Hommlett and sell and recoup, and then come back to advance deeper into the swamp. We all became encumbered with the goblin loot and moved out dreading a random encounter…sure enough we got one.

Two hobgoblin and their wolves. This was going to be a tough fight [notice the silver/metal bars in the bottom right of all of our portraits denoting medium encumbered – ouch!] Eldiritch was the first to react and charged the nearest wolf hitting the flat-footed beast bot only lightly wounding it. Stallen played his little diddy, ‘Let’s Kick Some Ass!’ and defended. Unfortunately, before the rest of us could move, the hobgoblins and the wolves all pounced on the thief, and while the first three blows missed, one hobgoblin moved to his rear and stuck his spear almost clear through Eldiritch [He critted for 12 points of damage causing immediate bleeding and to be at -5]. As Eldiritch slumped to the ground Karish bellowed out a mighty wail and charged the hobgoblin whose back was to him and almost cleaved him in two, killing him instantly. Zert the follower charged as well and dispatched the wounded wolf. Even the man-at-arms, Ranoil charged in to take any attention away from the fallen thief lest they coup-de-grace him. Kumari was prepared and using her gods’ power healed the thief to stop the bleeding although he was still disabled. The last wolf and hobgoblin quickly fell the next round and Eldiritch was healed a bit more to be able to walk. He was told just how close to death he came and laughed it off.

The group limped back to Hommlett and felt wiser with that last fast, somehow better. They decided to train up and rest before heading back to the swamps and of course sell off their loot. So far so good, some close calls, but overall, a good team…but will it last?

* * * * *

[Next time… Level-up! WOOT! We all got a level (not the followers) so next we meet, we advance ourselves and delve back deeper into the bog. Stay tuned for Chapter 3!]