Session 2

The game begins with the party on the hill overlooking the burning town trying to decide what to do.  Their mission is to deliver a book to a monastery and then sit around for a month collecting their pay.  It has nothing to do with saving a town from a horde of flesh eating monsters.  They are in debate when 5 of the nasty zombies crest the hill they are on and attempt to eat their faces off.  The party wipes the floor with the creatures.  One oddity of the event was one of the creatures has a sword run through it from back to front.  This person appears to have once been a wizard of some sort and once they slay him again, Spitz the quick thinking filches a ring and a wand from the corpse.  Now the party can hear the screams from the Inn of those trapped inside.  They put caution to the wind and charge in to take the assailants from behind.  They quickly realize there are a large number of the creatures around the Inn.  What they do not realize is I assumed they would be more cautious and done at least a bit of reconnaissance around the building before charging in.  So I rolled to see if the group on the other side of the building would take interest in the noise and join the fray. Luckily for our heroes I rolled a 00 which I figured should be interpreted as the creatures wander away rather than join the attack.  What the party still had not come to grips with was these are not undead zombies and can not be turned nor affected by spells that affect only undead.  So much to Ryans disgust when he attempted to pass invisibility to undead he instead found himself quite visible and somewhat edible.  He was critically hit and knocked unconscious.  Two of the creatures piled on him and began what could only be considered a rip and tear fest on his entrails.  He had moments to live before Jims cleric of lathander saved the day with a cure spell.  During this time the barbarian attempted to crash through the barricaded door.  Now I really have no idea what he was going for but I told him it was obviously barricaded from behind and had been withstanding the barrage of the creatures quite nicely.  He charged in trying to bash through and rolled a crit failure.  I determined he would bounce off the door and needed to make a dex check to stay upright.  He failed this and was pounced on by our gnashing friends.  They bit him and he failed his save.

Ill let that sink in.

So the party finishes off the exterior and meets the guests that were barricaded in.  There are a few NPCs from the village along with the tavern keeper and his wife and a few children.  Two of the trapped NPCs are evil and see an opportunity to escape and just bail.  The rest of the trapped offer their help to the party but once they see that the barbarian is falling ill they decide it is better if the party kill their friend or they will have to do it for them.  The two wizards and the cleric put their heads together and attempt to combine all of their knowledge of healing into creating a cure for this plague.  I allow them to roll to see if they come up with anything and they roll well.  I considered the options and I decided to allow the barbarian another saving throw for his condition.  He rolls his d30 which we allow once per play session per character.  He rolls a 7 on the d30 which again means he fails.  He decides to raid the bar and end his time on earth in a drunken stupor.  The party knows now that he only has hours to live and wait for him to be quite drunk and then kill him.  It was a good effort on the part of the healers to try to save their mate but to no avail.

So Jef now had to come up with a new character which we just determined was one of the trapped NPCS in the Inn.  He rolled up a dwarven fighter and off we went. 

From the Inn keeper they learned there was an elf that came to town a few days earlier.  This elf met with the town elders over the course of a few days as well as wandered around the town freely.  When the outbreak occurred the elf had vanished but the townsfolk had too much to do trying to heal those that they saw as falling ill not realizing they had caught a much more deadly virus than the flu.  So the party realized from the description of the elf that they had seen this elf leaving town as they fought the creatures on the hill overlooking town.  

They decided to trail the elf.  The path lead them to an old abandoned keep that was horribly decayed by time and the elements.  They proceeded into the ruin and were promptly set upon by a squad of human troopers who were wearing a spider symbol on their gear.  The troop was attempting to hold off the party while one of their group jumped down a hole that led to the dungeon of the keep.  The party made short work of the troopers and moved down into the dungeon.  They found several passageways to explore.  

Upon going down a flight of stairs there was a heavy rumbling from the ceiling and an iron gate fell separating the party into two groups.  The grate made enough noise that it alerted the bugbear guards.  8 bugbears move from their lair and begin to assault the party.  

Through a judicious use of flaming oil and a cleric of lathander that leapt into the fray, the party made it through the bugbears mostly unscathed.  However the combat alerted the other guards, a troop of gnolls.  The gnolls were also quickly dispatched but what the party did not know was one of the gnolls went to find the priest and his minions to bring them the news of the incursion.  The party had only a few minutes before the cleric would arrive but they were unaware this was going to happen.  They slew the gnollls and begin to think they need to rest because they are out of spells and now have some wounds but the priest of the dungeon was not  going to let them heal up.  He led his troop of 5 soldiers into the party.  He began to chant and cast spells supporting his troops.  

The fighters had to carry the majority of this fight and I honestly thought it was going to turn very badly for the party. 

 One of the enemy warriors was 4^th level and specialized in long sword and he was wearing platemail.  The lower level fighters were wearing scale mail and as such were also very hard for the party to hit.  But a few natural 20s later the fighters were nearly dead and the cleric had to wade into the fight.  However, the party did notice there was a black-haired elven female that the cleric addressed as “my lady” and he told her to flee.  The evil cleric did lay into the party with his staff which was clearly magical and it sent our priest of lathander flying across the room nearly dead.  The party rushed to finish off the cleric and then chase after the female elf.  They find a temple dedicated to an unknown spidergod.  One of the tapestries has an image of the world completely shrouded in spiderwebs.  On a dias is a sealed cask which the paladin can clearly sense as evil and the wizards can tell it is magically sealed.  The female elf escaped apparently by going down a crack in the wall by magical means.  The dwarf can tell the crack leads to the underdark…

Here ended session two