Blackmoor campaign, recap pt.5

Forced to abandon our favoured Saturday night game time, we gathered on Friday night, tired, distracted and a bit giddy, to begin the onslaught on the Temple of the Frog. Clearly, nothing good was going to come from this.

Earlier we had the opportunity to witness the might of the Frog as a foolish froghemoth decided to assault the town. Although several unfortunates met their demise in the gaping maw of the beast, the temple guards and the monks were able to muster quickly and drive off the monstrosity. The monks were armed with strange rod-like weapons that shot beams of light which caused great damage to the froghemoth. They were truly impressive.

The next day we prepared our infiltration. Now GWAR isn't the most stealthy band of warmongers to ever grace the lands of Blackmoor, so we used all the stealth magicks we had at our disposal to at least get them into the temple undetected. From that point on, the gnome alchemist scouted ahead using his sneaky juice and a little bit of trickery to get around. At one point, he happened into a room full of swarms of dire tadpoles which bored into his flesh. They had to be carved out with a dagger. Worst of all, the gnome was rendered visible as a result and had a lot of perceptive bad guys to slip past to get back to his comrades. Naturally, the gnome was spotted and it was on.

The party did have some element of surprise, so the resistance was a bit disorganized at first. We killed a few temple guards and one of the weird monks with the deadly beam rod. We fought our way to the room with the man-eating tadpoles and this time we were ready. The alchemist lobbed an acid bomb into the room and the tadpoles were destroyed. Then GWAR charged in...and were promptly trapped as giant stone blocks descended on both sides of the room, sealing both exits. Then water started filling the room...and then sharks with frickin' lasers on their heads (ok, I made that last part up). Fortunately, the members of GWAR ate their Wheaties that morning and some heavy lifting was able to extricate them from the room. The gnome fiddled with the mechanism and locked the trap, preventing further problems (snicker). We knew there were guards beyond, so our warlock decided to try to bluff them into opening the door. Dressing as a guard, he convinced them that the intruders were defeated and that he needed to enter to make a report. The bluff check was made and the door was opened. Two-thirds of GWAR then busted in, but fatigue and questionable judgement struck Dark, the cleric. He decided to cast obscuring mist while remaining inside the tadpole room. The spell worked fine, but it did nothing to prevent one of the guards from tripping the trap again from his side. The stone blocks fell, the water flowed and Dark was all alone in the room. It was now a race against time. The guards had to be dispatched so the trap could be disarmed and Dark spared. To add to the difficulty, another of the beam weapon monks appeared with an ogre zombie. The fighter, the barbarian and the warlock battled inside the guard room, the cleric practiced breath-holding techniques and the gnome used his wall-climbing juice and his fast-running juice to go around the other way and flank the bad guys. It was close, but the battle was won and the cleric was saved. We did a bit more exploring, briefly held a female rogue prisoner (before killing her because she wouldn't spill the beans) and very nearly caused one of the captured beam rods to explode, but we finally succumbed to fatigue. The Frog would live for another day.

-Rognar-