Gygax & Greyhawk Session #25 - Poison and Fried Eggs

DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

Ranzel of the Wood (Human Ranger 4)
Solcha (Elf Fighter 4 / Magic User 3)
Skeef Hawkridge (Half Elf Druid 4/ Thief 3) 
Goro (Half Orc Cleric 4 / Fighter 3)

Date/Time

Reaping 17 late afternoon to Reaping 27 morning

The party makes it's way through the maze of tunnels interspersed with patches of deep mud, heading north-west. Several uninteresting caves are explored before they come to a spot where Skeef (the only without wax stuffed in his nose) smells troglodyte. The party enters a wide cavern that extends well beyond their lantern light, shaking out into a skirmish line as they go. Solcha spies a hidden figure against the right wall and fires a shot with her bow. Before running off into the darkness, the camouflaged troglodyte hurls a wicker cage at her, which bursts to free a hissing viper. Before the party can dispatch the serpent, it bites the elf and she goes down, poisoned. Skeef and Goro jump in to save her with a combination of slow poison and neutralize poison, and party begins to advance carefully. A side chamber is found, with a nest full of troglodyte eggs about to hatch. Oil and flame are applied, but the screams and smells attract an onrush of troglodyte defenders. More pit vipers come flying at the party, and this time Ranzel goes down. Once more, Goro drags his fallen comrade out of the way and starts casting spells to bring him back to the fight. Meanwhile the rest of the party  engages the hordes with swords and hold person spells until all are dead. Skeef also manages to capture a pit viper (and several pit viper hatchling in the next room). They pile the bodies to burn, and then push to the end of the cavern. There they find the drying pelt of their fallen giant weasel friend, as well as a pile of treasure hidden under one of the mud-pile sleeping nests. 

Leaving the long cavern, the party fights past a screaming and savage bonesnapper. Who is an easy kill since it's chained to the wall. They now find themselves in the naga's chamber again, having approached it from the opposite direction as they did last time. A quick search of the green glowing, water filled cavern reveals no unrecovered treasure, so they backtrack a bit to a side passage. Where they encounter a pair of huge spiders, and this time Skeef falls dead to their poison. With no spells left, Ranzel calls on his wilderness wiles to suck the poison from the wound, thankfully not poisoning himself in the process. This stabilizes the druid/thief enough for the party to retreat back to Orlane for a week of rest and recovery. 

Returning to the dungeon, they continue this exploration of the lower level. They encounter a curious room where zombies operate a system of pullies and buckets, raising water from the pool in the chamber to the darkness above. After much conundruming, they realize this is a sump to keep the lower level from flooding. As they discover when they destroy the zombies and the water level starts to rise.

Rushing ahead of the rising waters they check out one last place; a water filled chamber they bypassed in their original explorations. Here the party is surprises to see one wall of the passage has been opened up, revealing a hidden  storage area. A boat now also lay at the waters edge, so they party piles in to cross the long cavern. At the end they find a raised mud bank and wooden platform, similar to the treasure room they found on the upper level. Here though the treasure is looted. Two chests lay smashed on the platform, and a body lay amid the ruins. They examine the body and find it had died of poison, likely from a trap on a chest.   And he looks like one of the Derek the Cultist's men. Based on the body and the tracks Ranzel examines, it looks like the treasure was looted when the party was recovering in Orlane. Cursing their luck and promising revenge against the wily Derek, the party returns to Orlane once more to consider their options going forward. 

GAINS

47pp

273gp

490sp

gems [350gp, 200gp, 110gp, 80gp] 

Giant Weasel Pelt [3000gp]

KILLS/VICTORIES

10 Troglodytes 

2 Mud Vipers (1 captured)

1 Bonesnapper (helplessly murdered) 

2 Huge Spiders 

5 Zombies 

LOSSES

Solcha, Skeef, Ranzel (poisoned) ... but they're feeling better now.