Let's see how far we've come

## Finally we do the "adventure"

Old Yarik greets us as we approach from our long detour to reincarnate Grutt. He immediately tells us that he has bad news for us. Krunc glares at him; bad news? I stare at Old Yarik and say “You better have some good news for us, why don’t you just tell us the opposite of what you were going to tell us.”
Old Yarik looks confused then begins to speak, “Um.. We sent.. We did not sent sentries into the surrounding forest; and they weren’t attacked by uh.. a dragon that was not with a bunch of wizards…uh; there are no dragons further in the cave”
Oh man thank god, the last thing we need to deal with are dragons. Krunc says, “Well that is good news, so there is a dragon further in the cave” Old Yarik looks down at Grutt and looks further confused suddenly he smiles and says “You brought us a Halfling to eat?” -- Grutt starts growling at him. I slap Old Yarik and say “hey you treat Grutt with some respect he’s an orc in a Halflings body and he’ll er.. she’ll tear you apart. “ Old Yarik starts laughing and says that there is no way that a girl Halfling will beat him in a fair fight. He points at Grutt and says “I challenge you to a duel”
A duel!? Fair Fight?! Krunc and I look at each other and slap our hands across our faces. Grutt says loudly “You challenge me to a duel!? HAHAHAHAHA” He pulls out his battle Axe and charges at Old Yarik roaring in orcish I shall teach you a lesson from Gruumsh. Old Yarik pulls out a hand axe. (Which brings more groans from Krunc, Gorm; apparently he got these hand axes from elves……)

The battle takes almost a minute and a half by the time Grutt’s small Halfling body stands unscathed on top of the strongest warrior in the tribe everyone is there. Silence fills the cavern. I announce to everyone that this Halfling was once a great orc warrior and died gloriously in battle unlike many of you pitiful orcs. Gruumsh has sent him back to us in this form to humiliate you and show you that you have fallen far from his grace. Some orc from the crowd yells back, “Why would Gruumsh send him back as a Halfling” I roar back “ASK GRUTT”

Grutt stands as tall as his 2’8’’ frame will allow, “Because I was too powerful, as an orc I was the most terrifying in the entire north” By the time Grutt is done with his speech the entire tribe is chanting Grutt’s name.

Meanwhile Old Yarik is healed by Krunc’s healing aura. Humiliated from his defeat. I ask him for more information about the dragon. “He glares around and says, yeah the dragon I..” I interrupt him by boldly announcing “Dragons have magical Items! Let’s go!” Old Yarik shrugs and leads us deeper into the cave. Apparently this used to be an old Dwarves fort, you can tell by all the \*\*\*\*\*\* dwarf architecture. We bring Thark with us. We need to teach someone how to lead a tribe in our absence; the tribe in its current state is pitiful. Finally we arrive at a descending stairway; Grutt’s everburning torch glows eerily casting weird shadows down the stairway. We descend into the unknown to find dragons.

While we are descending the stairs the sound of buzzing continuously grows louder until suddenly 8 large mosquitoes assault the party. They are about the size of an orc shotput and it is very fun smacking them out of the air. Gorm is especially adept at it. Unfortunately two of them latch onto Gorm and he starts screaming in pain. Not knowing what to do he tries to pull them off but weirdly he’s not strong enough. Finally we all start just beating them off him with our weapons, I charnel touch them until they are all dead. What were those things? Gorm looks a little pale and by the looks of it they had drained a large quantity of his blood. He tells us he’s taking waaay more con damage in the past and that we’re good to go. Once again I’m very happy to not lose any constitution.

Hopping over a large stream we come to two tunnels, we pick the tunnel to the north. The huge tunnel opens up into a natural cavern of sorts. It appears to be a dwarven burial ground. Sarcophagus’s line an elevated portion of the cave. There is some weird glowing fungus lining the walls. I am sure that the Dwarves have magical items. We all run up to the top and see about 20 of them. I run to one that looks like it’s especially loaded with magical items. Inscriptions catch my eye, it’s written in dwarven which I can read thanks to the Green Dragon who made me learn dwarven for some reason. Roughly translated it says “A curse of unimaginable doom to any who opens the tombs” Hmm… a curse of unimaginable doom.. I can’t.. even imagine what that would be like. I take a couple of steps back silently and let everyone else open the tombs. They all dive in; only three of the sarcophagus have anything in them. We find some crappy dwarf armor and a dwarven warhammer. Casting detect magic reveals not a thing in this entire chamber. What the heck! Gorm in his rage throws the warhammer as far as he can down the tunnel.

Backtracking we go to the other tunnel we saw. This leads us into a larger cavern as well, unfortunately this cavern smells like the worst kind of feces, sweat, and oil. Suddenly through the darkness troglodytes stand forward and throw javelins at Gorm. We all let loose the might roar of the Orc charging forward into the darkness. One of them is dropped by my scythe looping off large portions of his upper torso. The last one starts running towards a cage set into the natural wall, his end is met by a well placed dragon sword through his back. After retching a couple of times due to their disgusting smell I search his body and find a single key. We look through the cage and see a bear staring back at us. Hmm.. I say that the bear must be guarding magical items; why else would the troglodytes have a bear way up here in the north. Let’s open the cage kill the bear and get all the magical items.

Krunc tells me that this is a brown bear. Smart Krunc using his knowledge Nature. I would never have been able to discern such facts from mere appearances. I unlock the cage and we all charge forward to do battle. Thark’s blade is batted away by the bear but he is unable to dodge anyone else’s blades. We land solid blows into the bear. Roaring the bear lunges at Krunc. A huge swat of his paw knocks Krunc across the face. Suddenly the bear leaps on top of Krunc; Krunc desperately trying to escape the grapple with the bear. \*\*\*\*! A sense of déjà vu overcomes me and I remember that when we’re fighting stronger opponents than us that I have to weaken them. I aim my ray of enfeeblement straight at the bears buttocks (-7 strength) The bear shivers after the spell and Krunc is able to lift up the massive bear paw and escape from the grapple. Meanwhile everyone is just landing blow after blow. The bear is roaring loudly and this time just lays into Krunc; poor Krunc gets pummeled with both claws and goes down after the bear bites into his face. No! I yell not Krunc! I leap up as high as possible bringing the scythe down straight through the bear’s back into his lungs slaying him as I do most things, run up and hope that my charnel touch can bring my friend back from the brink. Slowly his face heals and eventually he stands up. He smiles.

“Krunc you owe me a magical Item I saved you life twice today” I let him know, hopefully he’s not smart enough to do the math. We all start rummaging through the cavern and not even a rock can be found. Why did the troglodytes have a bear if not to guard their magical items?

Bummed out we start looking around the cavern, there are several other paths that lead away from here. We look into one of them and it is covered in disgusting mold. We are about to simply leave that room alone when all of us notice a gleaming sword which apparently reeks of “I am magic come get me please”. Not to be fooled by the DM I summon Jakob to drag the corpse out. Mold from all corners of the room begins to shoot puffs of crap at Jakob but as most undead creatures he could care less. We run away as he drags out the skeleton. Finally he disappears and the corpse is left there on the ground. The skeleton is grasping a long sword but is still covered in mold. Gorm says that he will burn it off, he stands ten feet away from the corpse and throws a bottle filled with alchemist fire. Apparently he needed to stand eleven feet away. Mold shoots out in a ten foot radius, Gorm screams echoing down the cavern and hits the ground. We wait for the mold to settle and for Gorm to stand up… What kind of devil mold is this? Gorm is dead. We all look around wondering how it’s possible that mold was able to kill the might Gorm. I cast detect magic on the gleaming bastard sword and detect that it IS magic. But at what cost. There must be a better way to get magical items.

Krunc points to a passageway that we can see sunlight out of. “Let’s go get the druid, maybe he will make us kill more elves!” We all nod that this is a great idea and we begin to leave. Suddenly I say “Wait! We need his body” We remove all of his gear and cut off a body part and begin our journey.

The druid (who’s name is Mathias) is surprised to see us again so soon. I smile and politely say “Good friend, we have returned as we seem to need uh.. your aid again; do you have any more elves to kill?” He glares at us and finally he speaks “I do not have any need of you at this time, however I feel that I may have need of you in the future, I will bring your friend back for 1,000 gp and the promise of your help in the future” As much as I’d like to tell this tree hugger to go hump something, we really have no need for all this coin we’re carrying, and we’ll probably be back in a couple of days anyway. “Oh that sounds like a deal, as long as well.. Can you ask Malar to bring Gorm back as well not as a Halfling? Please? Halflings can’t fight very well and we kinda need Gorm” Malar promises me that Gorm will not be brought back as a Halfling. Krunc brings out a huge back filled with thousands of copper and silver pieces that we have been lugging around. Malar looks slightly annoyed at first but finally shrugs takes the body part and begins to cast his spells. Eventually the spell ends and we must wait for a while. I try to strike up a conversation with Mathias you know, ‘human talk’ but he ignores me mostly.

Suddenly a glaring white light appears, and suddenly standing in the snow is a hyena looking creature. Knowledge Local check informs me that Gorm has been placed in the body of a Gnoll. (+4 Strength, +2 Con +1 Natural Armor Class) Gorm looks around and says “I died?”

Malar promises us that he will have need of us in the future and that he will hunt us down and kill us if we betray him. I promise him that we’ll be back in a couple of days to reincarnate me; why would we betray him? We take off. Luckily all of Gorm’s equipment fits his new body. He tells us that it is even better than the orc body he was in. I tell him that he will never again speak of such blasphemy! The all orc campaign continues! (er… right)

So now we have two magical items, a magical bastard sword and a magical long sword. We give the bastard sword to Gorm and the long sword to Thark. We notice a couple more passageways off this cavern and we pick one at random. It eventually leads into a huge cavern so large that we can’t even see across it. We wander around in the darkness until finally we spot a door. Charging it we all begin to try to bust it down; after thirty minutes we give up. It’s solid iron. I try to use the handle but it’s locked, suddenly I hear Gorm yell out quickly in orcish “Arm yourselves we are under attack by alien looking freakish… things!”

Behind us are two disgusting looking snakes with heads that have multiple tentacles. Attacking it Krunc and myself are barely able to pierce it’s tough armor, however Gorm and Thark easily slice through it with their magical items eventually we destroy them both. I need a magical weapon that I know how to use. I announce that we have to find the key to this door.

Krunc points out a passageway that leads out of this cavern and we follow it. The sound of water rushing is heard and we walk into a cavern with a river and a waterfall. We notice stairs and we use those instead of taking the waterfall. The stairs take us down into another open cavern at the base of the waterfall. We notice two doors and as the campaign name would suggest we immediately charge into them doing our best to kick them down in one kick.

Both doors sail open, it was hilarious watching Grutt try to kick open the door. I feel bad that he’s trapped in such a body. Actually I don’t really feel that bad. Apparently these rooms were used in decades ago as a storage room; almost everything is moldy or covered in mold. I decide that I’ve had enough mold for a lifetime. Krunc screams in pain as something begins to attack him, it looks like a puddle of some sort and it’s touch utterly destroys krunc’s armor and clothing he stumbles away screaming and burning with acid. We waste no time in firing arrow and throwing javelins at the puddle until the small moving pile of ooze sinks into the floor and stops moving. There is absolutely nothing in this room of value. I look up and mumble silently to Gruumsh that we could use a little help in getting revenge.

## A Tale of Three Dead Orcs

15th of Hammer

Play suddenly begins with us back where we last left off…. Peculiar… Krunc stands naked what’s left of his clothing still slowly burning off from the acid attacks from the puddle of.. I don’t know acid? I might invest ranks in knowledge (Dungoneering) because I have no idea what the hell that was.

Krunc tells us he’s cold. We all start chuckling, finally Gorm says “we can tell” then we all bust out laughing deep echoing laughs that momentarily quiet even the waterfall thirty feet away from us. Eventually we quiet down and I suggest that we go back to the orc tribe and get some new winter clothing and armor.

Old Yarik greets us, I’m not sure what this guy does all day. Krunc demands new armor as he has had a slight 'wardrobe malfunction.' I inform Old Yarik that we will be spending the night. He points at Gorm and says, “what the hell is that?” I assume he is inquiring about why Gorm is in the body of a Gnoll. I tell him quickly that it’s Gorm and he has run afoul of a spell and now inhabits the body of a Gnoll, I don’t understand either so stop asking questions.

Krunc receives some new studded leather (it doesn’t smell new) and we decide to camp out for the night.
During the night I brainstorm for ideas on how to combat this “adventure”. By morning I have a rough draft written out. We will bring two orcs down with picks and hammers to bust through the door that is locked, meanwhile we’ll search for the key. Secondly we’ll bring Wark (The stupid orc from earlier) down with us and use him as a 10 foot pole, we simply cannot afford the time and coin currently that it will take to reincarnate one of us. We will walk through the natural caves below and slowly I will draw out a map and we’ll make sure we’re not missing any magical items.

I instruct Thark that his tribe must begin massive population eventually you shall fill this entire cave. I command Old Yarik to bring two orcs and Wark and they will be following us. We will also needs heavy picks. Two random orcs eventually come up to us and we instruct them that they will be using the picks to chip around a door that we can’t get through. “Where’s wark I say glaring around”

Eventually Wark shows up, late as usual. I smile as he approaches and say loudly, “Wark we’re promoting you to lieutenant!” He looks really happy! “As an orc befitting of your stature you can no longer use silverwear, you must eat like most orcs, BUT you get to travel with us, the heroes!” Suddenly he looks sad much to my dismay I’m not sure what he could be worried about. Gorm speaks up “Before you weren’t a lieutenant, now we’re going to treat you with respect; we will be giving you special missions” Wark smiles and says, “Of course I’m a lieutenant now!” He looks very excited.

Before we leave I hear Thark giving a rousing speech to his tribe ordering massive reproduction. This is greeted by cheers from the entire tribe. We see the only female we’ve seen since we have been here fleeing down a tunnel towards the exit to the mountain. I wonder where she’s going. Oh well we have things to do.

Before we leave I ask Old Yarik if he could clarify what dragon was down here. He looks up and says “Oh yeah we had scouts exploring some robed wizards that were camped in a nearby swamp. When they went to attack the humans a dark greyed dragon attacked them. Only one scout was able to make it out alive.”
“So… Why are we going down into the caves if the dragon is outside” I ask
“I don’t know he says, maybe the dragon lives down there”

I tell the group that we’ll go down into the cave and get every magic item there is then we’ll go looking for the dragon. Suddenly Grutt screams, we all look at him and he’s somehow completely wrapped himself in his spiked chain. “I’m practicing” he says in his defense.. and with that we began our decent to find all the magical items and then to beat up a dragon. Hopefully it’s not that big.

Under Grutt’s everburning torch we begin our decent. I slowly map out the area in as much detail as possible. I tell Thark that all orc tribes need slaves, we need to find the troglodytes and enslave them. First let’s take these two orcs to the door so they can begin their arduous task of picking away at it. I tell them “they can’t leave until the door is down or else we’ll rip off your arm and use it to pick away, however it will definitely be your arm picking the door”

I begin mapping out the large cavern and notice a cliff about twenty feet high that we didn’t explore. It’s an easy climb and the only thing we find is a nest of some sort with coin. Krunc points out that it might be those tentacle creatures we fought, we scoop up some coin and descend back down. (Map point 26). We follow the wall on our right all the way until we get into the room at the bottom of the stairs (Map point 16). We notice a small tunnel that we didn’t want to trudge through.

Krunc points up the river, “Lieutenant Wark go scout the area up ahead” Wark puffs up his chest and runs up the river. We wait a couple of seconds. Wark comes shambling back and he’s carrying something. Grutt yells “Wark what is it?!” Suddenly we hear the tell tale buzzing of those flying cat sized mosquitoes. I decide to roll initiative.

Wark comes stumbling out with three stirges attached to his body. He begins to panick and tries to remove them from his body. Meanwhile we’re all beating them off with our respective weapons. I try to charnel touch them off wark. We kill two of them, but not before two more latch onto wark. Growing more lethargic Wark starts screaming “Gett them off mee!!” Some of them are full at this point and begin to fly away. Gorm starts picking them out of the air with his bow. Wark however falls over, his body completely drained of blood. " Damn.. " Gorm Says "now we need a new ten-foot pole."

16th of Hammer

Well Wark found a small bag with some coin and a weird stick before he died. I yank the stick out Grutt's hand and realize with my infinite knowledge it’s a wand. Using the knowledge I learned from the green dragon I keep trying to trick the thing into working saying the usual words to activate a wand. Suddenly the entire cave is filled with a bright white light. Yay I mutter a wand of light. I shove it into my backpack. Everyone is rubbing their eyes and glaring at me.

I continue to map out the cave and come to the other side of the river. This side has a low tunnel about 3 feet high; we’d have to crawl under it. From the smell of it, it looks like we found the troglodytes. We begin to argue about crawling through this crap to get the troglodytes. Eventually Gorm says that “Orcs do not crawl” So we begin to find a new way into their layer.

We find the damn again that completely blocks the room from the river. However the water easily continues down into a waterfall at the other end of the room. We argue about breaking the damn. Eventually we go down the stairs. The stairs take us back to the room where we beat the acid slime thing. There was one more tunnel here. We walk through this tunnel and notice an extremely fast moving stream. We decide not to jump in it. Walking further down the tunnel we notice a door down a small flight of stairs. We walk to the door and open it.

It’s a room filled six feet up with water. Disgusting murky water. We don’t see anything. We want to leave as we don’t trust our DM when we encounter rooms like this. Of course we see something at the far end. I summon Jakob! To go grab it out. He does his bidding like a good slave and fortunately for us none of us have to go into the water. The corpse is disgusting as well, an orc who has been here for a long time, rotting. I say “Damn, Orcs never have any magical items” I cast detect magic, nothing is on the body but there is something radiating magic at the very back. “Does anyone have the supernatural ability to breathe water?” I look around, staring at our level 3 green dragon shaman. “There’s magic weapons! I say hoping that someone will volunteer to swim through the sludge"

Krunc eagerly volunteers and is about to jump in when I say, “Damn dude, take off your armor first that \*\*\*\* will reek for months” And that’s how for the second time this adventure Krunc stands naked before us before jumping into the water and grabbing out some disgusting backpack filled with two potions. "We need some way of identifying potions, and… well anything for that matter. It isn't going to help if we have these magic items that we don't know what they do" I say

Krunc uses the fast moving river to clean himself off and eventually puts his armor back on and we continue on.
Eventually the cave opens up and we spot some huge looking stalactite. I remember reading about a creature called a roper from my books back in my youth, however this one is quiet dead. At the base is a human with some tattoo on his arms. I barely recognize the tattoo as some wizard cult that worships dragons. “Who would worship a dragon” We all laugh, except Krunc for some reason.

We notice an iron door, after yet again another attempt by all of us to break down the door we are forced yet again to open it with the handle. Inside this room is what looks like a prison cell. The door is locked unfortunately and we are unable to break it down. I try to break down the wall, but fail. Grutt announces that he has found the key. I tell him finding a key is exactly what Halfling do, and that he’s doing a great job. He must be getting smarter as he has finally caught on to my sarcasm. We open the door and find the skeletal remains of a dwarf, with another key on him and some strange looking coins. I try to appraise them but can only determine that they must be worth more than gold. We decide to call them ‘platinum coins’.

We make our way back upstairs and find the two orcs trying to pick the door down. Not the natural cave around the door. They were trying to pick the door. Krunc walks up and with a miraculous slight of hand manages to open the door with a single punch (Using the key). We tell the orcs that they have a new mission. We take them to the damn and have them pick the damn. We sit and watch them to make sure they don’t do anything stupid. About ten minutes goes by before one of them starts complaining. They get tired. I yell at them “Kobolds do this for hours and they don’t whine!” I hear one of them mumble back “then you should get kobolds to do it” I charge him and with a 20 grapple check pick up off the ground and try to throw him down the waterfall, as his impending life dawns on him he finds his strength and he manages to slip out of my grasp falling into the river right before the fall. I start kicking him as hard as I can and with a scream he falls down the waterfall. I look back at the other orc who begins to pick furiously.

So now with only one orc picking, I decide to help the other orc pick the damn. Eventually I give up frustrated. I look back at the rest of the group and say “Looks like we’re gonna have to crawl.” Suddenly we hear what sounds like Draconic. We get quiet and I was a little scared I might admit. But I won’t. Krunc whispers, “There’s a dragon on the other side of the damn.” We all know what we must do.

“Let us all go crawl and kick some dragon ass.” Grutt says in her girly Halfling voice.

“We’re going to fight a dragon?!” the nameless orc npc announces.

I look at him and look back at the waterfall. “Are you going to stay here? Something might happen to you….” I look at the rest of us and say “let’s go crawling”

We run around to the only entrance we can discern, a 3 feet high passage.

We all are breathing heavily, we are about to do battle with a dreaded dragon with only the hope of magical items and the protection of Gruumsh as our inspiration. I quickly promote lieutenant [nameless npc] and tell him to lead the way. He quickly gets’s down on all fours and begins to crawl under the 3 foot high tunnel. The passageway is mostly gross water. It smells like troglodyte funk. He gets to the end of the tunnel and lets out a strange noise then stops moving. Grutt drags his body back with a large wound punctured the back of his skull.

Gorm and I look at each other. Another ten foot pole is wasted. \*\*\*\*, this dragon is tough.

My massive intelligent brain starts to strategize. The tunnel is three feet high, our Halfling is only 2’8. I can summon some kobold zombies and have them distract the dragon while we crawl through. I announce my plan; with a quick mutter of prayer to Gruumsh I begin my casting. A small zombie appears on the other side of the tunnel and immediately begins to attack something hidden from view. Grutt charges forward through the passageway and is able to block all attacks with his tower shield and armor. Gorm and Krunc and Thark begin to low crawl through the tunnel as the sounds of battle rage ten feet through the muck. I don’t crawl immediately as it’s a traffic jam through the tunnel, instead I summon another zombie kobold who appears. I yell out to attack the lizard! Grutt yells out in orcish, “There are several of them, they are those lizard creatures that we fought earlier by the bear; there is no dragon fear not; beware the smell it is of the worst kind”

Krunc has made it through at this point and takes several blows from all the troglodytes standing around him. He stands up with a scream and barrels through blade and sword to make room for Thark who does the same. Gorm makes it through and even though all of them have taken blows that would fell most mortals, they are able to easily shrug off these blows then they struck down upon thee troglodytes with great vengeance and furious anger. By the time I made it through most of them had died, and those few left were slaughtered. My zombies’s vanish in a cloud of smoke.

We are able to save two of them as slaves for the tribe. The rest are dead. The entire tribe is dead. We find the bodies of all their warriors and children. The nests of these creatures have been ransacked, the tribe leader was found dead. I found traces of magical items but they are long gone.

I announce the bad news to my brethren. “My dear friends, it looks like we have arrived too late. If Gorm and Grutt had not died we probably would have arrived before this event. The event I speak of is of course our loss of magical items. Yes, it appears from my investigation that real adventurer’s have arrived here before us, wiped out the tribe, and taken our magical items for themselves. It is with sadness to say that we must press on, we must find the resilience to overcome these trials of Gruumsh. We will persevere, nothing not death, or other adventurers or fear of dragons shall stop our progress. We are destined to get these magical items, kill the adventurers, kill the dragon, and destroy those who would oppose us. Great men of Gruumsh, we left the door unlocked to our future. We must make haste and go, else the real adventurers might beat us to our next treasure hoard as well. Onward!”

Our roars echo throughout the cavern.

## How the West was Won

Ahh, it has been quiet a while since I last wrote to you all. For that I apologize. Let's just say that my Ink and parchment got soaked. It has taken me a while to gather the resources to write once more. It's not like I can walk into the city for ink and let me tell you my brethren have no use for the substance.

I spoke recently of our magical item theft by the adventuring party that wiped out the troglodytes. We raced across the chamber to a door with the dwarven symbol of a blacksmith inscribed upon it. Oh the fond memories of this door. The Grek's we slaughtered outside of it. Our attempts at breaking it down. The two orcs we got to use picks to try to break through it. Now it was open. I slowed down my orcs (although one of them is a gnoll and the other a halfling with cute pink armor). We descended down a flight of stairs and arrived into a small room with two doors. We wasted no time, charging into the door I smashed a good smash into one of them flying into it with a double kick. However miraculously powered by gruumsh, it was the halfling crusader Grutt who was able to bust it down. The statue's I had ignored telling you about quickly dropped axes onto us, I think it must have been from the shock waves of our impact.

Meanwhile Krunc had taken the other door, and again from the impact shockwaves the statue's dropped axes into him as well. Well I easily healed myself and Krunc but we now faced a problem. It was a dead end. Both doors were fake and opened to walls. Hmmm...

"There must be a secret door" I said
"A secret what? Door?" Grutt looked at me then quickly looked around the room glancing left and right for it.

I realized immediately the problem. Door in orcish means "kicking in thing" We do not use doors the way some races do. We use them for fun sometimes when we sack villages we play a sport with whoever can kick in the most "kicking in objects" wins.

"Well we're pretending to be adventurer's, I recall reading that sometimes their are secret doors that you're not suppose to break in. Their used to hide magical items in them"
"How do we find them?" Krunc asked me
"Secret doors don't open by kicking them really hard, we have to find a secret level or something" I said
"Damn... I wish I had remembered early, adventurers' always find magical items in the secret doors; we're gonna have to remember to start searching rooms for the secret doors"

Anyway I begin a meticulous search through the room which takes roughly an hour. Everyone else does too, but man they are simply too stupid, I see Gorm and Thark check the same spot on the statue at least seven times. Finally I notice that one of the bricks in the wall can be pushed out. I kick it out of course. It's a tight fit, we all crawl through except the halfling who easily walks through. I notice her wielding the spiked chain we bought her. We should have bought her a pink one. Oh well we can always go back later and buy another one.

We climb the stairs on the other side. At the top of the stairs is a short door with some picture of a dwarf on it or something. As we climb the stairs suddenly a voice in dwarf emanates from the door
"Alert! Alert! Intruders are approaching" Luckily I speak dwarven.

I yell in orcish quickly, "You guys be quiet, intruders are approaching"
We all press our bodies against the wall and wait for the intruders.
"It's a good thing the voice warned us" Grutt says quietly next to us
After a couple of minutes we realize it was all a big joke. We ascend the rest of the stairs and kick open the door. We see a large hallway, about 50 feet wide and 70 feet long with pillars. "Any intruders?" I say in dwarven "show yourselves now intruders and we won't kill you"

A harsh voice calls out from behind one of the pillars in common "Go back the way you came, THIS IS THE ONLY WARNING YOU WILL GET" I translate this to my cohorts.
Krun whispers "I think THEY are the intruders"
I say "Dwarves make excellent slaves, they can make all the weapons for the entire tribe" As if on cue the sound of distance blacksmiths can be heard in the background.

I yell back "Do you guys have any magical items?"
We hear some murmering and finally a voice yells back "GO BACK, This is the only warning you'll get"
"That was the second warning you're giving us, are you lying to us? I feel like you'll give us another warning if I ask for it. We're sending in a diplomat!" I tell them helpfully

Grutt steps forward, our halfling diplomat.

"No diplomacy! Leave this, wait That was your only warning you'll get" they yell back in common. Suddenly we hear them casting spells. We know what to do.

We pour into a room with several doors. Four to be exact. But we have a battle to deal with. Unfortunately Gorm doesn't get the memo, and instead of charging in like the rest of us. He charges the door and busts it open. Suddenly a large black dwarf appears, Gorm somehow dodged the blow before he was even aware of it. Amazing! But what kind of dwarf is 8 feet tall and has black skin? None of us know. Another one appears out of thin air swinging at the small halfling, luckily he wasn't very quiet and Grutt heard his approach dodging to the side at the last minute. Their were two of them... I do the best I can at dodging their blows and I run past both of them, nimbly dodging both of their attacks as I bolt past them. Krunc and Thark charge in behind me and both land blows into the same one, easily knocking him out of battle. Suddenly another one appears behind me, piercing me in the back. However, the process to turn me into an undead creature prevents much damage and I know I'll be fine. Gorm charges in from the door and in one blow slays him before he hits the ground. Now their is only one left, 8 feet tall and wielding a short sword we surround her. She is doing good job trying to dodge us, but she knows she's about to die. Finally she trys to run, however Gorm snags her through the torso with his bastard sword and she drops, mumbling on the ground.

I say, "Awesome we have slaves!" We bandage them up, Krunc uses his healing aura to stabilize them. Then we tie them up with some rope and throw them back into the room with the statue. We're about to press on when I suddenly stop... They spoke dwarven... yet they were large. I suggested we go back downstairs. Sure enough the creatures were now much smaller. So we re-tied them up. One of them started to wake up, so I punched her in the face. She went back to sleep.

While everyone was tying up our slaves I went into the room that Gorm had broken open. It looks like an ancient dwarf temple. A dwarf corpse is laid to rest on the alter. I yell out "Anyone in here" in orcish

An undead orc warrior rises from behind the alter. Decked out in plate mail. It's a wight. Sweet...

I say "It's a pleasure to meet you, so you bound to this room?" He looks at me for a moment before saying
"You don't look like those weak orcs from further up, what are you doing here?"
"I have come to release you!"
"release me? I am bound forever? Gruumsh has charged me with a sacred task"
"Gruumsh has charged me with a sacred task TOO!!" Grutt yells in, interrupting our speech.
We have to tell the wight the story, which he listens to with much attention. Then he begins to talk my ear out with great tales of his past, how he got here. I listen attentively. He gathers some magical items for me: some gold and scrolls. Grutt begins to lose attention. Suddenly I hear from outside the room, "FOR GRUUMSH" and catch sight of Grutt charging away from the door and out of sight. I smile at the wight and tell him that I'll be right back.

I charge out of the room. I see that Gorm is fighting something and that it's in a door. I charge forward, it's then that I hear some kind of strange babbling. I slow to listen to the madness and at the last moment I realize my mistake. It's an Allip. I sit enthralled for a while. Trying to break it. Finally I snap out of it. Gorm is laying on the ground in an eternal nightmare. I yell out; IT CAN ONLY BE HURT BY MAGICAL ITEMS

Thark has a magical item but unfortunately he keeps missing it. This thing could be deadly... some of us don't have a high wisdom score. Grutt runs over and picks up the medium sized bastard sword in his small halfling hands. I power negative energy as I rebuke the undead creature. He cowers before my might. In his fear, he does nothing as Grutt lands a blow with the bastard sword.

Everyone thinks Gorm is dead, but I assure them that he's only in a coma. He'll wake up in... 8 hours I predict. So we camp out here in the room for 8 hours. I chat it up with the wight. He hasn't had anyone to talk to in a while so he's basically chatting me up. He's really talkative.

Suddenly in dwarven we hear from the bottom of some stairs that descends out of the room we're in. "Hey you guys, what are you doing; isn't your shift over?"

I quiet everyone down and we sneak over flanking the entrance they will arrive up. I yell out in my best dwarven "We have decided to take a double shift, you're welcome!"

"Ha yeah right, no one takes a double shift" They arrive up the stairs just in time to be slaughtered by us. How fortuitous. Let's just say no one took damage. I go back to chatting it up with the wight. We heal the dwarves back up to 1 hp and feed our friend the wight with them. He appreciates it a lot. I go back to chatting it up with him. The dwarves eventually rise as wights. The orc wight smiles at me and kills the dwarves again. "can't be hanging around dwarves for thousands of years.... likely drive an orc crazy ya know?" I laugh.

Another couple of hours goes by again. Suddenly we hear more words in dwarven. Looks like the rest of them have decided to come up. This time we don't play games. We take to our respective sides of the stairway and wait. I hear one of them say "Something is wrong, look at the blood" . Right about then is when I started casting summon Undead. Jakob wants to play. I turn the corner when my spell is done. They are right at the top of the stairs, surprised as all hell. I place Jakob right behind me. Combat begins. One of the dwarves is wielding a wicked looking double bladed sword. One of them is wearing robes. Jakob and I slam our attacks into the robed one. Finish off the spellcaster is what I always say. Another easy fight. None of us were even reduced to half our hit points. We throw some more food in for the wights and take a couple more slaves. Now all that's left are the blacksmiths. We can still hear the ringing of hammer on anvil far off in the distance. Those will be prized slaves.

Gorm eventually wakes up. He doesn't look so hot. I wouldn't either if my wisdom was 1. Well my wisdom is only 4 and I get by. We hear the blacksmiths descending the stairs this time. "Where is everyone?" they shout up in dwarven. We don't play games. They surrender and we drag all the unconscious bodies back to the orc camp. We then proceed to explain what slaves are for about 10 days or so. Then we head back. Some of us at level 4. JustinDing level 4 babyJustin

## Born to be Wild

Well we start clearing out the dwarf camp. We fought an animated table. Everyone fought it like a normal monster. I showed them how an orc fights a table by leaping into the air and dropping the "people's elbow" into it. That showed it. We found some loot. Then we started finding secret doors. We split up at one point. That's when it happened. I busted open a door and much to my surprise (as I was expecting no more encounters up here where the dwarves are) There stood two dark robed and pale skinned humans. One of them wielded a sick, wicked looking scythe. I wanted it immediately. Two zombie trodglodytes. And... can it be? It's so adorable! It was; a slaymate! I had only heard about these from my readings. They really are as cute as the green dragon who had raised me said. Just gotta watch out for it's bite.

~slaymates are in libris mortis~

I reacted first luckily, I commanded the troglodyte to kill the human with the scythe. Krunc double moved into the room at this point. I yelled out to my companions to get the hell over here. They were pretty far away, but could run x4 in a straight line. Lucky us right? The wizards casted some spell over themselves. Some kind of self buff. I couldn't see what it was. The next round is when I rebuked the undead. I rolled especially well and everything in the room without a heart beat stopped what they were doing and cowered in awe. Krunc suddenly breathed a cone of acid over all the people in the room... I had no idea how he was able to do it. I assumed he has learned how to emulate a dragon's breath; interesting.. The wizard then casted a spell on Krunc which completely paralyzed him. I saw the evil look in his eyes and knew that a coup de grac was next. Gorm, Grutt, and Thark poured into the room but none of them could stop the wizard from slaying Krunc. I reacted on instinct, permanently blinding the wizard as his scythe was mid swing. His swing went wild as he stumbled back. The fight was over at that point. Gorm, Grutt, and Thark dog piled one of the wizards. I grappled the blind one to the ground; pinned him (even with a ray of enfeeblement sapping my strength) and held him up so Gorm could ram his bastard sword through him. We killed the troglodytes, but not the slaymate. Oh no, for him I cast Command Undead. He became my friend. I asked him not to kill my friends. I treated him really nicely. I picked up the scythe which was extremely magical.

The slaymate hung out with us the entire time. I was really nice to him. He told me the story of the necromancers goal to turn dragons into dracholiches to fulfill a prophecy. Unfortunately for them, we hate dracholiches. I asked him if he would show us where the dragon was and he agreed to help us out. He rode on my shoulders down to find the dragon. We descended deep into the mountain.

Walking along, Grutt holding a torch because he doesn't have darkvision a voice boomed out at us in Draconic. We looked at each other. None of us spoke draconic. Finally the dragon appeared to us. We were on a small ledge, on one side was the wall of the cave, on the other was a large lake that extended beyond our darkvision; the ground we were on was practically at the level of the water but the depth of the water looked especially deep. The dragon raised his head out of the water and blasted myself and Grutt with a line of acid. Stumbling away I was forced to cast cure moderate wounds on myself as the blasted creature dipped below the water and out of sight. We all readied attacks for when it appeared. Suddenly it's head appeared again leaping out of the water, only my shot found home but it didn't look especially life ending. Landing on the beach it immediately began it's assault on Gorm. Gorm took it in stride, not even raging Gorm simply returned the attack. Everyone else charged forth and began to land blow after blow on the creature. I even yelled out for our slaymate to bite it. Which it ran up and promptly did (rolling a 20) and bit the poor black dragon's left cankle. As quick as lightning it pushed itself off the ledge and back into the water. We all waited again; we knew we had hurt the creature. Finally it stuck it's head out of the water again. About ten feet in.

I don't know why I did it, it actually was a stupid thing to do. All I knew was that something inside of my snapped. I wanted a piece of this dragon. I charged... by the time I was ten feet away I realized I was still holding my crossbow. So I dropped it. And lept into the air trying to tackle the dragon where it swam. It actually looked surprised before easily batting me out of the air with it's claw attack then breathing a line of acid at Grutt. I splashed into the cold water and immediately begin to get tumbled by the current. However unknown to me I had inspired my allies. Every true-bloodied orc; and even a gnoll charged and lept. Each one scoring a hit that did large amounts of damage, everyone was raging. By the time my head rised above the surface the dragon was dead. Lucky for us as we were wearing armor and swimming was very difficult.

We pulled the dragon out of the water and all of us got to shore. Man did we ever feast on delicious dragon meat. It was... amazing.. and the hoard of coin and magic; I will have to tell you about it some time.