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The City beneath the Earth Part 1

Briff Stonehammer meets with adventurer's in a tavern to ask them to perform a task for him.  The town he previously lived in was swallowed by the earth.  In this town, a magical forge existed that was used to make magical weapons to fight against the Duegar.  Briff has recently located the entrance to a cavern which he believes leads underground to the town.  Unfortunately, a wyvern has taken the entry cavern as a home, so he needs a group to go in, get past the wyvern, and investigate.  If the forge is found, Briff provides a ward to place on it that will teleport the 1000lb piece back to the surface.  The adventurers are offered 10,000 gp if the forge is found and returned.  The adventurer's may also keep anything they find.  Briff hints that since the forge runs on gold, they may find both gold and magic weapons.

The group now consists of:
*Lino, half-eld paladin, played by P.
*Dahlia, human rogue, played by K.
*Jerry, human barbarian, played by V.
*Annah, half-elf ranger, played by C.
Coco, gnome bard, played by S.

The group wanders into the cavern and surprises the wyvern huddled in the refuse of slaughtered cattle in a large blood-spattered cavern.  Near the back of the cavern, the remnants of a building stand, with a roof sticking out perhaps 2 or 3 feet off the ground.

The adventurers make quick work of the wyvern who is gone in a mere two rounds.

Jerry quickly charges over the ground and onto the roof, ignoring calls for Dhalia to check it out first.

A crack and a crash later finds Jerry fallen through the roof into a rock enclosed pit in the base of the house.  The group taunts him thoroughly for not listening and then throws him a rope.

Over the roof, the party finds another cavern with a perfectly preserved house at the other end.  Checking as they go, they make a couple of rounds of movement when up pops a Xorn.  From their knowledge, the party knows that Xorn, which closely resembles a clawed, armored, three-legged plant stand with a ravenous mouth on top, is an earth dweller that can smell the jewels they carry in packs and attached to weapons and mugs.  If he is hungry, he will be wanting to eat them.

The group attacks and the xorn responds.  Lino rolls a critical and is able to kill the xorn with a single stabbing blow after her teammates have weakened it.

The part proceeds cautiously through the unlocked doors of the next building.  They find a brew pub complete with tables, chairs, and small bar, and three large 8 feet high kegs built into the back wall.  The search through the cobwebs and find nothing.  Jerry pulls out a mug and flips open a tap, only to unleach a flood of skunked ale into the room.  The door clicks locked behind them, leaving their ranger standing outside with a bewildered look on her face.

The party is going to act fast.  They have only a few rounds before the room will be filled and only a couple of rounds before the rather short gnome will be treading water.  Lino acts quickly and opens another spigot, disabling the trap, unlocking the door for Annah, and reveal a tunnel further into the cavern.

Careful checking by Dahlia reveal to traps and the tunnels leads them to an underground river perhaps 40 feet below their ledge.  A cable car rides on a rope over the river that stretched from a post on their ledge to a ledge below.

Coco checks out the cable car with her engineering skills and reckons that it will only hold 2 or 3 of them, but they will have to get across the river quickly or the car will fall.

Jerry and Coco start across first with Jerry pulling.  Failures on strength checks slow their progress and send them falling into the river.  Jerry swims to the shore of their destination.  Coco gets swept downstream but finds a second cavern opening that she can reach.

Lino attempts to climb on the rope down, but falls and swims to shore where the barbarian sits.  Dhalia and Annah both jump in and swim.  Annah drifts downstream too far and ends up with Coco.  Dahlia joins the barbarian and paladin.

And so ends our first part of the quest for the Magical Forge of Stonehammer.




I tried using a soundboard tonight, but found it too hard to get to the various sounds on my netbook screen.  A matrix of buttons would have been a lot easier.  Instead, I'll probably just use background music.

--Dm Dad

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