Leaving The Valley of Asthar Rho

Party at the start:
Mace Blackstar (Mike D.; Human Fighter)
Wilbered The Silent (Tom S; Human Cleric)
Castor Bean (NPC; Human Bard)
Trygvie (NPC; Elven Wizard)
Kane (Al G.; Human Monk)
Zuran (NPC; Human Fighter)

The session began with the party in the Temple of The Snake God in the Valley of Asthar Rho.   The serpentine guardians lay dead at their feet and Castor was able to replace the gems that had originally subjected him to the curse that robbed him of health.  With a sigh of relief, Castor the Bard scuttled up to the statue and replaced the gemstone eyes in the stone eye sockets in the statue of the Snake God.  It is presumed, if the information obtained from Alaric the Brave's ghost was accurate, that this would end the curse that was slowly killing the bard.  Only a night's rest would determine this for certain.

As the gems slid into place there was a sudden shimmering in the air around them.  Before their astonished eyes, the bodies of their vanquished enemies shriveled up and dissapeared.  Beards sprouted from their chins and hair cascaded down their shoulders, giving all of the characters a "Rip Van Winkle" type of appearance.  The players were astounded at this turn of events and pulled out knives to trim their fingernails since their now long nails seemed to make grasping their weapons difficult and possibly painful.

They stepped outside the temple and noticed that the trees and bushes seemed in fuller flower than when they had entered the temple just an hour before.  There was also a row of wooden posts topped with human skulls along the side of the path that hadn't been there before.  Zuran expressed a desire to go home and see his father in order to reassure the old man and the rest of the party agreed after considering that they had accomplished their goals of getting their revenge upon Cirdis, bringing the bones of Tayleen to the Tombs and rescuing the slaves from Nudlo.  With that they set off down the path to the stone amphitheatre that also gave access to the tunnel to outside the valley.

The amphitheatre appeared to be empty and deserted.  The players went down about 100 feet of tunnel until they arrived at the rope and wood bridge across the deep chasm.  A small staircase led up to a small guardroom above the bridge.  The players recalled that a group of "monkeymen" (Tasloi) had ambushed them from above by hurling rocks when they had originally crossed the bridge.  Mace and Wilbered went up the stairs and surprised a group of six Tasloi guards in the guardroom as Kane climbed up the wall from the outside.  Mace and Wilbered chewed through the Tasloi from the front as Kane attacked them from behind; in a few short rounds all of the Tasloi lay dead.  Zuran and Mace hacked open a locked wooden chest and removed 500 silver pieces.  Zuran picked up a few of the Tasloi weapons as souvenirs and the group departed, travelling across the bridge and down 150 more feet of rough tunnel.

The tunnel wound its way about 450 feet southwest, suddenly ending in a cave mouth filled with leafy vines.  Indirect sunlight could be seen filtering through the foliage.  Kane snuck forward and peeked through the leafy vines, seeing a largish cave furnished with a blacksmithing forge complete with firepit, bellows, work tables, anvil and other tools.  The cave mouth he was peeking through was thirty feet above the floor and they could see an exit on the other side of the cave.  Vines grew down the walls and the roof was open to the sky, hundreds of feet above, filling the chamber with dim daylight.  Kane and Castor the Bard climbed down the wall into the unnoccupied cave.  Mace tried climbing down and fell, his armor making a sound like a pile of iron skillets dropped down the stairs.  Wilbered also fell in his climb down but Zuran climbed down without incident.

The party made a cursory search of the forge area but found nothing other than some blacksmithing tools, ingots of iron, freshly forged shortswords, arrowheads, axeblades and other crude weapon parts.  While Kane and Mace reminisced about the fight they had fought with the Tasloi in this cave the last time they had been through here,  Zuran took a couple of the shortswords as souvenirs and the party moved along through the exit in the south.

A long and winding tunnel led to an intersection which branched off in five different directions.  At first the players were puzzled and had no idea which way to go, but carefullylooking at the floor, they saw a number of muddy footprints leading to the south.  The passage which led due south also looked a little wider and the floor looked smoother, so they decided to follow that passage.  A short while later the southern passage was discovered to have ended with a locked stone door.

Listening at the stone door, the party heard nothing -- but it was uncertain if there was nothing to hear or if the thick stone door blocked all sound.  Castor attempted to pick the lock and discovered that the lock did not have tumblers or any of the other mechanisms one might expect to find inside a lock --- it was a simple hole.  After puzzling over the locked door for a while, Wilbered shamefacedly remembered that the last time they had passed this way they had used a key.  Digging through his pack and pouches, Wilbered found the key; a large one made of jade.  It fit into the lock and turned easily.  The huge slab-like door swung slowly open on noiseless hinges as they pushed it open.  They discovered that if they removed the key the door would close --- obviously magic was involved.

The room beyond was a large square chamber with a high ceiling.  Metal rungs led up the east and west walls and across the ceiling, meeting in the middle of the chamber where a large wooden chest was fastened, upside down, to the ceiling.  In the wall opposite the stone door a plain wooden door bound in iron could be seen. Kane recalled having climbed across the ceiling on the iron rungs and having opened the chest -- inside of which they found the jade key.  He also remembered that one of the iron rungs had been trapped to pull out when he hung on it.

Leaving the jade key inside the lock of the stone door, they approached the wooden door, listened, and then had Castor pick the lock.  They opened the door and discovered a stone hallway heading due south, then ending in a T intersection going east and west.  The players chose to go east, rounded two corners and came to another wooden door.  Another listen failed to detect anything, so Mace tried the knob.  Suddenly the door was opened from the other side by a very surprised bugbear who apparently never thought he would find a half a dozen surface dwellers standing on his doorstep.

The room was home to six bugbears who grabbed up their morning stars and began to fight.  The fight was kind of tough (Bugbears are a lot tougher in first edition!) but the players prevailed, although at one point Wilbered fumbled and threw his mace across the room.  Another bugbear fumbled and broke his morning star, subsequently grabbing a spear from a bunch leaning against the wall.  After all the bugbears were dead, the players piled the bodies in the corner and scooped up what treasure they could find --- a total of 90 gold pieces.  The room contained some piles of furs, rags and straw that the bugbears used for bedding, bowls of unholesome looking porridge, dried meat, a barrel of scummy water, etc.  Since they were tired and hungry, Wilbered used his Create Food and Water spell to feed them and Mace spiked the door shut so they could get some rest.  At some point in the night someone checked the door, but, unable to open it, they eventually went away.  The next morning, Wilbered and Castor cast all of their healing spells -- after which the party was in perhaps fair shape -- and having breakfasted again upon the magical food and drink that Wilbered had created the night before, they unspiked the door and set off once again.

They retraced their steps until they returned to the intersection that led north to the room with the chest on the roof, west to parts unknown and east back to the bugbear room.  They went west and soon came to another (unlocked) door.  They opened the door and Zuran and Mace were almost immeadiately attacked by the squad of bugbears in this room.  Castor threw an entangle spell, Trygvie shot off a couple of magic missiles and Mace, Zuran and Wilbered waded into melee.  After some combat, only two of the bugbears remained standing, both entagled by vines from Castor's spell.  They shouted out, "We surrender!" in goblin and lowered their weapons.  Since several of the party knew goblin, the meaning was clear.

"Wilbered," said Mace.  "Would you mind leaving the room?"  After the cleric complied, Mace and Kane killed the prisoners.  Up in Godsland, Saint Cuthbert scribbled a black mark in a book next to Wilbered's name.

A door in the far end of the room exited into a sandy cave.  Tunnels filled with dark water led off to the north, south and west.  Two wooden canoes were pulled up on the beach.  The players loaded themselves into the canoes and paddled off, exploring the winding tunnels of this underground waterway.

Suddenly, something happened --- but that's a tale for next time...

The adventure ended here.

character/player:	class/level:	XP at start:	Base XP award:	bonus:	XP at end:
Mace (Mike D.)	human FTR 7th	80,482	446	45	80,973
Wilbered (Tom)	human CL 6th	54,046	150	15	54,211
Castor (NPC)	human Bard 6th	30,292	223	na	30,515
Trygvie (NPC)	Elven MU 6th	51,931	-53	na	51,878
Kane (Al G.)	Human Monk 5th	45,279	150	na	45,429
Zuran (NPC)	Human Fighter 3rd	7,177	-53	na	7,124

Note:  Mace, due to his Chaotic Neutral alignment, took no XP penalties for the killing of the 2 bugbear prisoners.  Wilbered stepped out of the room and turned a blind eye to Mace's depredations, but Saint Cuthbert isn't the God of Law and Retribution for nothing --- he holds his clerics to a higher standard and penalizes Wilbered for having stepped out of the room "for a moment" and left prisoners in the care of a psychopath like Mace ("Cleric of mine should have known better!").  Similarly, Kane, the champion of law, took XP penalties.  Castor was guarding the rear out in the hall and didn't even know there were prisoners so he took no penalties --- as an NPC he gets a pretty small share anyway.  NPCs like Zuran and Trygvie actually ended up with negative XPs from the misadventure.