Tonight's cast of characters:
Sir Goldborn, having just returned from the battle against the orcs. He had stayed in Borgogazze one day and discussed the situation with the military officers there. Borgogazze and neighbours are hunkering down, placing defensive outposts, and generally preparing themselves for Orc retaliation. Conscripts are being raised again.
Mad Mouse, a new character. He's a fighter, and was rolled up by Green Gary's player for the occasion.
Kai the Druid, who successfully recruited five mercenaries who are expert marksmen. The game requires you to equip your henchmen, so Kai bought them armor, shortbows and arrows, and dungeon supplies. Surely he can't have forgotten anything important...
Anyway, Kai talked to mysterious woman Xenia again, who turns out to be a Magic-User. She's not interested in adventuring, but is an expert in translations (of languages, not spatial).
The party decides to explore the village ruins to the north and the catacombs beneath them. It is Jan. 24, travel takes two days, and they arrive at the ruins in the evening of the second day. They decide to camp there and wait for the next day. But something alerts the night watch they post: strange animal-like shadows moving in the distance!
Everybody gets ready in time to react to the threat (no surprise) and they finally discern that these are wolves. 17 of them, and advancing quite rapidly towards the party. Initial encounter distance is 170', but these guys are fast. Everyone shoots missile weapons at the wolves (a shortbow with a rate of fire of two) but most shots miss, due to the agility of the wolves, and those that hit only damage the wolves, no kills.
As the wolves come upon them, the party realizes they're in deep trouble. Not only does the enemy have double the numbers, but Kai forgot to equip his soldiers with swords! So they decide to escape and retreat into the dungeon, hoping that the wolves won't follow them there. This unfortunately means the wolves get pretty devastating free attacks on them (only 8 wolves are near enough to attack). Four men fall: three soldiers and Mad Mouse the fighter. They're not dead, just KO'd, but since the rest of the party is retreating there's not much that can save them.
So, Mad Mouse's player takes over one of the soldiers, named Soldier One. If he can survive the rest of the adventure, he will be promoted, aptly, to a Veteran (Level 1 Fighter).
The party makes it into the dungeon, and once they're there the wolves stop following. At this point, I task the players to map along while I use Appendix A in the DMG (random dungeon generation) since I didn't detail this particular dungeon yet. It was a pretty interesting experience not to have a map under my nose and relying on the players for distances and things like that.
Anyway, this seems to be a sacred place/burial ground of some sort. The partly explores with torches lit. Crudely-carved stone statuettes line the walls, and foreign inscriptions decorate them. Kai dutifully transcribes these inscriptions to bring them to Xenia when (if) they make it back.
The party comes pretty soon into a big room/passage that looks like an underground church, with pillars, a sanctuary and altar, and two staircases that bring the party up a half-floor.
While exploring the dungeon, the party deals with pit traps, stuck doors, and winding corridors and comes into a larger chamber. There are two large sacks in the opposite corner of the chamber, and several exits. Two large man-sized slightly-mobile mushrooms stand in the center of the chamber, and as soon as they are sighted they emit a piercing scream.
The party is worried about monsters being attracted by this, so they make it back to the large church-room. Then for reasons I don't understand they go back and face the mushrooms again. They fire at one of the mushrooms and put it out of order; the thing begins to shiver and shrink and stops screaming.
Suddently, six figures come out of one of the exits into the chamber! The other mushroom stops shrieking. These are small, 3' tall humanlike armed guys (Gnomes). They aggressively gesture for the party to stay back as one of them goes to check on the downed Shrieker. The party stays back and observes the action. Then Sir Goldborn the Paladin offers to help. He steps forward and uses Lay on Hands onto the mushroom he helped take down just the round before. The mushroom seems to get better and starts getting back online. A faint version of his scream begins.
At this point, Sir lets the gnome take his torch, and the other gnomes gesture at the party to step back even more. They do so until they can't see Sir Goldborn, the gnomes, or the mushrooms anymore. The gnome extinguishes Sir's torch.
He is left in the dark, and decides to trust these creatures and wait.
The mushroom stops his scream. All is quiet for a moment.
Sir Goldborn starts backtracking after offering his cape to the gnomes, who don't take it. Eventually he is illuminated by his friends' torchlight and reaches them. He lives!
The party decides to explore the dungeon a little more before calling it a night. They come to a dead end covered by a painting depicting a clan of Gnomes cultivating giant mushrooms. They take the painting which reveals a secret passage. Taking the passage, they deal with another pit trap and finally come to a second dead-end where there's only a mattress against a wall, and seemingly no secret doors.
Soldier One suggests to take the painting in order not to go back empty-handed. Sir is against it; doesn't want to anger the gnomes. After some discussion, Kai decides to vote for not taking the painting, so the party retreats from the dungeon empty handed.
They make it safely back; it is still night. Their fallen friends are not there anymore, but their equipment is. So they take what they can use, and Soldier One now has a sword (Mouse's bastard sword I think).
The trip back takes two uneventful days: the party makes it back to Trilo. Kai will present his transcriptions to Xenia and use Locate Animals and Animal friendship (I think) to try and raise an army of animals over the week. Will he be successful? That depends on the entries for these spells in the PHB and on which animals inhabitate the area!
Soldier One can become a Veteran, he needs to rest, train and introspect until next session. For HP, he will roll a d10, apply constitution bonuses, and take whatever is higher: this roll or the HP he has rolled this session.
Sir Goldborn will collaborate with Frank the ferryman to offer healing services to any adventurers that explore Ashes Island or other dungeons... asking 5 gp per heal (but healing anyway if the person can't pay). And I'm sure I forgot a downtime order, please remind me!
Johnny Joestar, the Ranger from last session, will ride around on his newly-acquired light warhorse and check-out the outskirts of large fortress in the hills north of Ristoro A, being very careful and avoiding conflict.
This session was very interesting! Although not so much progress was made by the adventurers. Still, we learned who inhabits those catacombs under the ruined village, and what that dungeon is like. And also, that the wilderness can be very dangerous...
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