The Caravan of Mummar Hafiz

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

Switching the campaign to AD&D wasn't a good idea --- the hoped for DM time savings didn't really materialize and the players seemed to enjoy the game more in 3e.  Thanks to the players for allowing me my "experiment;" now lets get back to the game using the 3e rules.  
Welcome back to Steve  B., who sat out the AD&D games but came back to strum the harp and kill gators as Castor the Bard.

When last we met, our six brave adventurers were paddling two canoes through the waterfilled tunnels beneath the mountains of Asathar Rho...  Mace, Castor and Trygvie noticed something moving in the water beneath the canoes.   Mace attempted to steady the boat and shouted out a warning to his comrades, Castor stabbed with his spear and Kane leapt from the boat and grabbed onto the craggy stone wall of the cave.  Unfortunately, his grip slipped and he fell into the dark and cold water.

As the monk hit the water, a large crocodile grabbed one of the canoes in it's powerful jaws and began shaking it back and forth.  By some miracle Trygvie and Wilbered managed to stay in the boat as Kane scuttled up the wall after having been bit by the croc.  A few magic missiles from Trygvie and some stabbing by the rest of the group and suddenly the croc sank out of sight.

Kane leapt back into the canoe and the party rowed south, hoping to find their way out of the water maze.  Suddenly there was movement in the water -- the combat had apparently attracted two more crocodiles -- and one of the canoes suddenly lurched, spilling the heavily armored Zuran and Wilbered into the water along with Kane.  Two of the huge crocodiles were lashing around in the water, biting all three of the PCs unlucky enough to have fallen in.  The water was eight feet deep, so unless the players did something soon, they would begin to drown.  Mace and Castor backed water to draw up alongside the battle and lend support.  After a lot of stabbing and slashing and magic missiles, the two crocs were dead and a very waterlogged Wilbered was finally hauled back into the canoe.  Half the party was fairly badly wounded. 

Mace, Castor and Trygvie rowed a slight distance ahead and found the beach where they had originally crossed the water long ago.  There was a single canoe pulled up on the beach and they could see a vandalized sculpture of Muir, flanked by two burning stone braziers.  The statue was covered with evil looking runes and glyphs drawn in blood, soot and dung.  The crafty adventurers looped a rope round one of the crocodile carcasses and towed it to shore, where they butchered it and cooked the meat using Castor's flaming spear while Wilbered and Castor distributed healing spells.  With shameful, downcast eyes, Trygvie, the proud man of science, had to ask Wilbered (ironically named "the silent") for divine healing.

Trygvie cast Detect Magic and determined that one of the runes drawn on the crumbled remains of the statue's shield was a magical glyph rather than simple grafitti.  The stone braziers also radiated magic but Trygvie surmised that the magic of the braziers was simply producing the eternal flame effect.  Since Zuran wanted to do a good deed, he used sand and water to scrub the grafitti from the Muir statue.  When he started cleaning the shield, the glyph discharged, wounding him slightly.

After healing Zuran and packing up enough meat for several days as well as a portion of the croc hide, the party followed the tunnel from the room with the statues and braziers about 200 feet until it ended at the exit in the base of the mountains.  The scrubby and overgrown forest looked a little different than when they had been here last --- but they had originally entered these tunnels in the fall and now it appeared to be summer.  They formed up their ranks and walked down the narrow path to the shore where they hoped to be picked up by the peasents from Nudlo.  Before journeying into the Valley of the Shrines, they had agreed that the villagers from Nudlo would send a boat out to the island every morning to pick them up if possible.

As they passed through the forest, a huge spider leapt from the trees and bit Trygvie.  Poison coursed through the elf's veins and he began to grow weaker.  The rest of the group killed the spider in fairly short order.  The poison made Trygvie feel sick and weak -- but there was nothing to be done about it so after slapping a couple Cure Light Wounds spells on the elf (which helped heal the bite but did not restore the elf's lost strength), the party trudged on.

After about two hours they reached the shore and the ruined tower where they had agreed to meet the villagers.  Since it was late afternoon, the boat would not arrive till the next morning, so the party hunkered down in the ruins, set a watch, and rested the night.

The next morning, Wilbered cast Gentle Repose on the croc meat to keep it from rotting and Restoration on the Bard and Elf (restoring a little Con and Str, respectively).  After two hours waiting, the boat failed to arrive so the party decided to return to the caves and retrieve canoes in order to return to the Village of Nudlo on their own.  Since the mighty Root River was over a mile wide at this point and Nudlo was several miles away, swimming did not seem a viable option.

Leaving the croc meat at the tower (lest it's smell attract predators in the woods), the party marched back to the cave, grabbed two of the canoes and marched back.  Wilbered and some of the others, having learned from bad experience how quickly one sinks in armor,  shed their armor and tied it down in the canoe with rope. 

It took about three hours to paddle back to Nudlo.  They didn't see any smoke from the chimneys, which seemed odd, and as they got closer they could clearly see that the fields were overgrown with weeds and saplings, half the town appeared to have been destroyed and the thatch roofs were collapsing and losing their thatch.   No animals could be seen grazing on the hillside nor could the expected village sounds be heard.

They rowed up to the shore, dragged the canoes onto land and donned their armor, eager to find out what had happened.  As they got closer, it was apparent that the village had been abandoned.  Half of the huts appeared to have been torched and the rest were standing open and abandoned.  Weeds grew in the streets and vines had started to cover the walls.  Zuran was upset and frantic, so they started to search the remains of the village.  Most personal possessions appeared to have been removed.  Trygvie found about twenty graves which appeared to be several years old, about half of which were marked with crude headstones or crosses made of sticks.  Zuran inspected the few graves marked with names, and, while a few of the names were of people known to him, his fathers name did not appear on any of the headstones.  It also appeared as though someone had been visiting the ruins on regular intervals -- there were a number of old campfires and some relatively fresh horse dung -- probably someone had stabled over a dozen horses in the area outside the town's abandoned inn a few days ago.

The Bard and Mace noted travellers approaching on the road from the east.  There appeared to be a half dozen or so people and two or three times that number horses or mules, but from this distance more details could not be seen.   Kane climbed to the second floor of the Inn, Mace and Wilbered hid in the ruins of one hut and Castor, Zuran and the elf hid in another.  After a while, five men leading more than a dozen mules laden with bundles entered the ruined village.  One of the men, dressed in a turban and wearing a scimitar, directed the four others to tie up the mules, remove their packs, feed the animals and make camp.  These underlings were dressed in leather armor and crossbows were slung on the pack saddles.

Kane wanted a closer look and tried to climb up on the roof from his upstairs window, but the rotted windowsill gave way beneath his feet and he fell almost on top of one of the mules, landing lightly on his feet like a cat.  This frightened the man in the turban and his assistants scuttled about snatching up their weapons.  The rest of the party emerged from hiding and they had an uneasy standoff, pointing crossbows at one another, while Wilbered and the man in the turban questioned one another's motives.  The stranger introduced himself as Mummar Hafiz, a trader, and stated that he was travelling to Bramwald, a town about three days travel to the east.

The players inquired what had happened to the village of Nudlo and Mummar stated that it had been abandoned for some time -- six or seven years -- after the residents had been attacked by bandits.  Mummar stated that the survivors had abandoned Nudlo and gone to Bramwald but Hafiz couldn't say for sure whether Zuran's father was with them for he had never been personally acquainted with the man.  The "six or seven years" comment confused the party -- after questioning Mummar it became evident that they had, in some Rip Van Winkle-like fashion, been away for over eight years. 

It seemed obvious that the party needed a good, long stay at a nice inn and the attention of some professional women as well as baths, new clothes and haircuts.  In questioning Mummar, they discovered that Bramwald had a boom economy due to the recent discovery of a miraculous liquid called "earthsblood."  Earthsblood, according to Hafiz, was a thick black liquid found beneath the earth that made men rich almost overnight.  "It's magical stuff," said Hafiz.  "It can be made into a tonic to restore a bald man's hair, refined into lamp oil, fuel furnaces, serve as an ingredient in magical potions -- it has a hundred uses!"  According to Hafiz, Bramwald had gone from being a small town to a boomtown almost overnight due to the earthsblood.  Since the party wanted to help Zuran find his father and Bramwwald sounded like their kind of place, they eagerly signed on as caravan guards for Mummar Hafiz.

They camped that night in the ruined village.  Hafiz offered them herbal tea, felafel and flatbread.  The characters offered alligator meat and asked for alchoholic drinks but Hafiz recoiled in horror.  "Such an animal is unclean, " he said, "and the prophet says that alcohol is poison!"

The next morning, the caravan packed up and got underway.  Hafiz led a single mule in the front while his four muleteers each led a string of mules in a long column.  Each muleteer had a crossbow hanging on the packsaddle nearest to him.  The adventurers placed themselves along the column in order to be ready for attacks from any direction.  During the long day's march, they passed two well guarded caravans of large wagons loaded with piles of wooden barrels.  Kane* attempted to buy "a barrel of the beer you have on the wagon there..." but the teamsters said the barrels contained earthsblood and were not for sale.  In brief conversation with the teamsters and guards the players didn't learn anything about Bramwald or the road ahead that they had not already heard from Hafiz. 

Late that afternoon, as the sun dipped behind the mountains and the shadows grew long, the caravan was passing through an area with trees and heavy brush.  Suddenly there was movement on either side of the trail.  A half orc in battered armor arose from the bushes and shouted, "Kill them!"  A dozen Orc warriors with great axes leapt from cover and began running towards the party as two groups of orc archers opened fire.  One of the drovers was killed by an orc's arrow.  Mace hurled himself into the midst of one group of orc warriors and began cleaving left and right.  Trygvie lauched a fireball at one group of archers and killed them just as Hafiz was cut down by a single stroke of the half orc's great axe.  The orcs used flanking maneuvers to great effect -- each blow from the axes caused large amounts of damage and the orcs were on all sides, hacking at each character multiple times in a round.  Trygvie launched another Fireball and attempted to hit the half orc leader with a Melph's Acid Arrow but missed.  After sufferring repeated flank attacks, Mace was cut down by the same half orc who had cut down Mummar Hafiz.  The mules were in a panic and were attempting to run in every which direction, the three remaining muleteers were attempting, without much success, to shoot orcs with their crossbows and the characters were attampting to stay alive and kill orcs.

After Mace went down, an orc ran over and knocked Castor into oblivion with his axe, wounded Trygvie and was in turn cut down by Zuran.  Wilbered attempted a Sanctuary spell, failed and was also axed.  Kane drank one of his healing potions* and gained back a few hitpoints.   A sleep spell from Trygvie  took down the orcs flanking the monk and kept Kane in the fight for a little bit longer --- finally the monk managed to take down the half orc leader.  Finally, all of the orcs were horizontal and a few party members were still standing.  As Mike D. summed it up,  "Yes, Mace is feeling a little down, but then again so is Wilbred (unconscious), Zuran (4 HP), Castor (unconscious), Trygvie and Kane (less than a half dozen HP ea.) and my boy Jim (a.k.a. Mumar Something-or-other) and his boys (unconscious x2, near death x 1 and not that hot to begin with x2)."

The adventure ended here.

*Thanks to Al G. for these corrections.

character/player:	class/level:	XP at start:	XP award:	bonus:	XP at end:
Mace (Mike D.)	human FTR 7th	26073	1362		27435
Wilbered (Tom S.)	human CL 7th	23465	1362		24827
Castor (Steve B.)	human Bard 6th	17569	1362		18931
Trygvie (NPC)	Elven MU 6th	19972	681		20653
Kane (Al G.)	Human Monk 7th	23080	1362		24442
Zuran (NPC)	Human Fighter 4th	7537	681	100	8318