Heather Under Moonlight

Session 10, 15/7/2025

The party returns in the middle of the same combat as last time, with Valeucoux and the Woman from Greick in melee with a ghast and a ghoul, Nissa holding back a pair of ghouls behind a stone door at the party's rear, and Relimi waiting around and casting spells. Valeucoux is paralyzed, but under the effects of a Sanctuary spell.

Combat continues from there; the very first round of the session, Nissa fails to hold the door and Greick falls to the ghast's bite. The party decides that discretion is the better part of valor and flees, leaving the ghouls to feast on the fallen fighter's flesh. The Woman from Greick's player decides she needed to get up early the next morning anyway and goes home (we talked after the session it's fine.)

The survivors encamp with the nomads for the evening, purchase holy water and replace their spells, and make a second attempt against the tomb. The party climbs onto the ceiling and, sighting the ghast in a crown with two bodyguards, kill him and one of his bodyguards with holy water, burning oil, and sling missiles. The surviving bodyguard ghoul flees, badly wounded, into one of the corner tombs.

They then leave Nissa on the roof and send Valeucoux and Relimi through the front door, killing two burly ghouls guarding it, and proceed inside - they're ambushed from behind by the wounded bodyguard, then one more ghoul crosses by the ghast's throne to attack from the other side. Nissa strikes the flanking ghoul with a dart, but it's not killed - quickly, her two party members are paralyzed, but the magic-user is able to cut both ghouls down with a quick Magic Missile and a volley of darts.

They bring the dogs through to verify that the tomb is clear, and quickly set to looting; they take the ghast's throne and crown, worth 5000 GP and 1000 GP respectively, then collect two scroll tubes decorated with a bas relief of a dissected human from inside a coffin (one had six spells, one was Protection from Magic) and find a pair of potions from under a false-bottomed coffin. An excellent haul!

As they return to Kelling, the party encounter a group of Holdman bandits; the bandit leader spies the many-thousands-of-GP throne and sees dollar signs, overriding his fear of an obviously well-armed force. He attacks, but he and his bodyguard get instantly obliterated by a high-level Burning Hands cast from a scroll and then torn apart by dogs. The remaining 14 bandits wisely decide that they didn't really want the throne anyway and run off into the woods.

On return to Kelling and then Tor, the party identify the potions (Sweet Water and Diminution,) retaining Sweet Water and selling Diminution to cover identification costs. They then spend most of their money leveling the entire party up and head out carousing. Valeucoux and Nissa lose money on a boxing match, Relimi gets almost killed by a group of giant rats but rescued by the guards, earning enough XP to level to third, and Nissa is approached by a quarry owner. They sell the scroll and Relimi levels up.

The quarry owner, Alfred, informs them that the quarry workers are walking offsite because of a "demon" that's taking them at night from the depths of the old temple. That's where we left the session, because I hadn't prepped anything for the temple and wanted to make it Something Special (classic me haha.)

Overall, while I think this was successful for the players, I feel that it demonstrates a series of common errors that they tend to make; there's an overconfident aggression evident, and a lack of preparation which got someone killed. An unwillingness to spend time or money to deal with known hazards, similar to what got those PCs killed in the pit trap in session 3. The second approach, however, was an example of pretty excellent tactical play and bore pretty significant rewards. Overall, good play from the party; they're amassing more and more enemies now, but they're also making good money and getting a good rate of levelling. Personally, I'm happy with how I'm running the game; I don't think it's arbitrary or mean on the difficulty front, and there's enough treasure available that the party are getting a reasonable quantity of rewards for the dangers they face. I've also been having a lot of fun with the game.