As I discussed in my earlier post on the subject, Sim, myself, and a group of our friends have an ongoing weekly Dungeons & Dragons game. This post will be the first of a weekly column detailing the highlights of the adventures our player characters find themselves involved in.

Alteria - Nentir Vale (map by Sim)

First off the party’s name came from our friend JJ, who’s Dragonborn Paladin has a nasty habit of failing even the easiest dice rolls and falling off high ledges.  It’s statistically unlikely just how bad that guy rolls.  You usually don’t even need to ask what he rolled, as it’s enough to just see the look of despair on his face while his character is hanging on for dear life.

The party began in the town of Winterhaven, which had a kobold problem, like so many small fantasy hamlets seem to. Investigating this led us to Keep on the Shadowfell
to stop a cult of Orcus from opening a portal to the Shadowfell.

After stopping the cult evil plans (just barely), we ventured to the much larger city of Fallcrest, where we learned of a slaver ring that had abducted several people, including a goblin friend of ours.  This led us to Thunderspire Labyrinth where we eventually did away with the slavers, ran off an evil mage, nearly died many times, and were reunited with our goblin companion, Splug.

The party then headed off to collect a bounty on the notorious gangster Garash Vren, only to find themselves sucked into the Pyramid of Shadows, where they now need to kill a millenia-old Tiefling wizard in order to escape.  This is where our story picks up.

The Pyramid of Shadows, session 4

The pyramid is a very dangerous place, with one or more heroes being knocked unconcious almost every session so far.  This session saw the group exploring deeper into the first level of the pyramid, in search of powerful magical weapons supposedly stashed in an armory near where they had last rested.

The Icy Armory

The party’s ranger, in his haste to get the loot, kicked open a frost covered door, unleashing the biting cold protecting the armory.  As the adventurers pushed into the ice-covered room, they lit everything they could on fire, hoping to use the warmth to avoid the cold damage they were all taking.

This of course had the unfortunate side-effect of thawing out several zombies that had been encased in the ice, and suddenly the party was surrounded, and taking additional damage from the zombies’ cold auras.  The situation got even worse when a huge demon burst through a door directly behind the very squishy sorcerer Gummicus, and began wailing on him and everyone else within reach.

Luckily, Gummicus was able to teleport away, and the heroes were able to focus fire and bring down the zombies and then the demon without any fatalities.  Inside the armory they found only empty weapons racks.

The Hall of Mirrors

Not wanting to leave potential threats behind them, the party then returned to a closed door they had bypassed before.  Opening it they found a long hall with a number of mirrors lining one side.  Suspicious of a trap, Fort, the ranger, shot each mirror to pieces from the safety of the doorway, then returned to strategize with the rest of the team.

The group decided to move down the hall to a door they could see opposite the mirrors, but as they attempted to open it, they were caught unawares by a flaming skull that appeared in one of the mirrors, which had been slowly repairing themselves while the party debated.  The ensuing fireball caught every member of the party, and kicked off an intense fight against the skull and its guards.  The skull continued to appear in mirrors and harass the party, while several other monsters tied up the group’s heavy hitters.

At one point Fort attempted to flank the main fight, only two be jumped by two more monsters lurking in the shadows and nearly killed.  He later spent several rounds stubbornly attempting to pry a mirror off the wall, never once rolling above a 10, while the skull flambéed him over and over again.  The rest of the party broke into the room the skull had been hiding in, killed it, and set up camp, using the skulls crystal ball (which enabled the party to look and attack through the mirrors) to keep watch as they rested for the night and tended to their wounds.

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