Later in history the group would remember this as "The First Culling" except within 8 sessions their probably won't be any members of the original group. :D
The basis of this mission was to investigate a mine area to fine the work area of this Durgeddin (spl?), the famous smith whose material we have acquired. After some dinking around the party made its way down the mine shaft. Nominally we followed the maps that Nerolyia (Liz's PC) had acquired from her uncle's shop. The maps were incomplete and the initial direction we set out was somewhat off the beaten path and turned up several dead grimlocks, although we never identified them as such, and cat creatures. Eventually we turn back and back track down another path and still remain loss. Finally Nerolyia manages to convince the party to pay attention and gets us down the right path. (Sorry for the lack of detail above, I discovered my PC had leveled wrong and was repicking Mysteries.)
We finally go the right way and enter a room. It is obviously trapped but some careful work allows us to pass. Entering the next room it's pretty obvious things are a trap. There are arrow slits along the walls. I use Bend Perspective to peer through the slits and discover some sort of booby trap. I then use Umbral Hand to attempt to disable the trap. I get very lucky on the Disable Device roll and set the trap off but keep it from resetting. Mist then attempts to carefully make his way up the other side of the room but accidentally sets off the other trap. Somehow I manage to hold it just barely so he can extricate himself and most of the party bolts through. I get cut up pretty bad as I trail in. However Merle does not run through and has to maneuver through the jammed side. She does manage it fairly well with only minor injuries.
The next room is, well, scary. It's a rope bridge. Mist being the most skillful climbs out and discovers its a trap that twists the bridge all over the place attempting to throw off or crush (by twisted ropes around them) anyone on it. He's quite talented and slips across. Sharice attempts to follow and makes it halfway before getting stuck holding onto the base rope. Sharice manages to hang on and start inching towards Mist and the safety of the other side. Then she loses her grip. This fall is fatal. Even feather fall won't help, our caster's just don't have the level for it to last long enough. A couple of bounces and a splash seem to be the end of our city watchwoman. It's about this time that Merle snags her with a lasso made from the huge amount of rope she carries saving Sharice from a fatal fall. After this the party uses the various ropes they have along with those of the bridge and make it across.
Next hallway has a simple booby trap: four thunderstones pop up in the middle and go off. Half the party is deafened for an hour after failing their saves. Only a couple succeed or are far enough away to be fine. Luckily that is the last major trap. Now we've found ourselves in a natural cave complex. Making our way to the areas on Nerolyia's map that are constructed. We find a room that seems a bit dangerous so I open it with umbral hand. Inside is a weird stormy display that I determine, to myself since anyone else who would care is deafened, is necromantic. Mist walks right in and the storm forms into what appears to be a living spell. Additionally several undead appear as well. Mist engages the spell while I attempt to use another Mystery on it. I fail and mist is engulfed by it. Immediately one of the undead stops moving. Mist is unable to do any damage to the spell but it and its undead minions don't get much in on him either. I eventually figure out that the living spell is both animate dead and control dead. I pass this information on to Mist who finds it less then useful. Eventually he pulls out of the spell and lets the casters (most of whom are working only 80% of the time because of the deafness) bring down the living spell while the rest of the party engages the undead. I amazingly put the killing blow on the spell and the room is cleared.
The party is now tired, hurting, low on spells, and half deaf. We opt to set up camp in this dead end room. At the end of the first watch though Mist awake me to tell me the Anson has died and I need to take the extra shift. Nerolyia is a wreck at the news and somehow everyone else is unawares of the situation. In the morning Mist fills everyone in. Anson panicked and fell/jumped trying to escape and is dead. The group is somewhat rattled but both Mist and myself urge to push on and Sharice quickly agrees as well. (Out of game I later learned that Mist helped Anson "sleep-walk" off a cliff after killing him in his sleep. Just noone woke up when he did it and he has a high bluff.)
At this point we head up the hallway essentially in the same direction we had come the day before but parallel so although my character felt eventually we might be backtracking we were still exploring new territory. The first room we come across appears to be a pit trap but after Sharice blasts the pit several of us realize it's an illusion and cross. Ironically the door on the other side is a fake. We head further down the hall avoiding a statue that probably is a trap. The next room is booby trapped in such a way that when you open the door part of the ceiling drops down. This is not an issue because we are coming in the back way. Nerolyia and Sharice figure out what is going on and also realize that the other door trigger the trap differently. Using Merle's rope we manage to get all the doors open safely. The hallway is a dead end.
Mist quickly discovers a secret door that leads back to the rope bridge and past the booby trap mechanisms disabled a ways back by my umbral hand. At this point Haem (pronounced Him, played by Adam, I accidentally called him Hin last post) appears and helps Mist find another secret door that leads to the booby traps on the far side. They also run into an angry dwarven ghost that attempts to possess them. It fails and sneaks back and possesses me as I head back to wait for the party by the collapsing ceiling room. This ghost had in his more corporeal life designed most of the traps in the place and is only slightly bitter that this group has disabled most of them. He opts to us my character to bait the rest of the party into the stone ceiling room and then crush all of them, including myself. It won't hurt him if I die. The trap almost worked but Carl, who was rather amazed that I suggested this plan, allowed the PCs to realize something was up and only Mist entered the room and avoided the collapsing ceiling. However, the ghost didn't bother to move my character out of the way. Splat. The Shadowcaster is now rather flat.
Tayla returns at this point (I should note PCs have a tendency to appear and dissapear randomly in the City of Stone) to find a very confused and somewhat distraught group.
The group did troop on at this point and figure out a very strange puzzle involving swarms of frogs to get into the final room. I'll confess I did not pay much attention as I was generating a new PC. I admit my reports on sessions are somewhat self-centric/PC centric. Although I think I honestly actually held my weight rather well this time. Forgive the bias and the ramblings that change tense/perspective tho!
My new PC will be a Psion. I'll prolly use him as an excuse to buy the newer Psionics books. Carl is now gone the next three weeks for military training so nothing new will come of this until prolly late July or early August. I can't wait honestly. I just hope this guy will last more then 4 sessions!
