skirting the shores of the Great Crater Lake
Rose, Human, Knight of the Mystic Order of Gnarth, master of longbow and 2-handed sword,
Tarkus Traptripper, Human, Fighter and door-opener of renown,
Xy, Green Gnartian, Mutant Mastermind and Magic-Sniffer,
Gorn, Reptilian, Fighter, deadly with Gnartian Quill Pistol, known to eat his kill,
and introducing,
Cenaturi, Purple Gnartian, Mutant Mastermind whose cunning will likely prove beneficial for The Party in many ways...
Finally... started playing again, DMing my Gnarth campaign. Everyone was a bit rusty, some hadn't been to the table in almost a year. Follies incl. The Party serendipitously 'finding' a map which revealed the one room they hadn't yet discovered in the Serpentman Caves, a hidden temple with an altar and curtained alcove. Tarkus Traptripper once again performed his perfunctory duty, yanking aside the curtain, which triggered the Trap; a chute in the alcove swung open and dumped a startled and angry Vorpion in his lap. Although severely mauled by the initial attack, Tarkus gave back just as well, and the creature was sound surrounded and eviscerated from all sides. Centauri claimed the segemented, insectoid tail claw of the Vorpion... to wear as a hat. A pretty cool magic item hidden in the altar would likely have been discovered, if The Party hadn't, for some reason, assumed that the initial examination of the altar by a single PC was sufficient...! The Party is unwittingly still carrying the key to this stash, hidden within a looted bronze cobra statuette. Will they ever find it, and if they do, go all the way back?
After exiting the caves and crossing out of the Rust Desert, they encountered a band of Blue Gnartian Raiders, approx 200 yards away, as each group crested opposing rocky dunes along the shore of the Great Crater Lake... the Raiders were all armed with longbows, the party was not! After injuring most in a segment of surprise, Initiative was rolled for the following round, the Party won... and stood there. Some attempted to decipher what the Blue Leader was shouting to his minions from atop his rusty-armored Monoceratops, it was something along the lines of, "Keep firing, fools!" After a few rnds of this, the Blues eventually lost a man to the one decent archer among The Party, and Blue Leader lost patience and charged. Despite the pincushioning of nearly all the PCs, and the subsequent dino-trampling of Tarkus Traptripper, the party rather easily dispatched their mismatched foes in melee. Even the Monoceratops, draped in his scraps of rusty armor, just rolled terribly. Blue Leader offered to take them to the 'unguarded' bandit hideout, but Centauri the Mastermind knew from his Mutant ESP that while the treasure was real, there were two Blues on guard, or so the Leader thought; once they approached the hideout, the Surprise tables were turned, and the party was able to approach withing the range of their ranged weapons, and slaughtered the slacking guards without hassle. A secreted, badly rusted and unlocked chest was found, containing coins and a few minor pieces of jewelry. Xy, the other Mutant Mastermind, sniffed to Smell Magic, but the enticing scent of cinnamon was not detected, and the Party assumed the Bandit Lair for the night.
10GP Gem: a record-keeping page for Proper Nouns, three columns; People (NPCs, legendary figures, etc), Places (visited, rumored), Things (items, creatures encountered)... anything important enough to be given a proper Name.
Highlight o' the Night: Centauri using his Alter Mass and Telekinetic Arm Mutations in tandem, to make himself weightless, and then carry himself across a field of battle. My atrophied DM mind was blown.
