Session #36

Well this session was certainly entertaining.

The party got another good taste of incorporeal undead.
And thanks to a high level trap, another PC death was added to the pile of bodies.

This will be the last session entry for 2 weeks. I am off onto another vacation. This time it's Lake Tahoe. More Texas Hold'em and I'm guessing to see the sights. But my main goal is to get some hold'em in while the Labor Day tourists are throwing away their money at the casinos. Of course, I could just as easily be someone else's Labor Day tourist...hmmm.

Map

(Doing this session quick due to a lack of time.)

The party left room N72, still choosing not to drink from the blood fountain.

Room N73: The door to this room has been blasted off of it hinges, from the inside. The party finds inside the room a bunch of destroyed tubes leading from the wall to a stone bier that holds a shattered green glass coffin. They attempt to figure out the room, but are unable to figure anything out.

Room N74: The door to this room was the most interesting part of the room. It contained 2 traps, one on the handle of the door, the other on the latch of the door. The first trap is a minor nuisance, a Dictum spell. Those that fail their saves simply wait a minute for the effects to wear off.

The 2nd trap is much, much worse. A Wail of the Banshee spell triggers after the party uses their Wand of Knock to unlock the door and then open it. Everyone in the area has to make a DC23 fortitude save. Everyone except the NPC-ified Zorak makes the save. So he uses his re-roll to try again...and fails again.

Zorak collapses to the ground from the loud shriek. He literally died of fright.

The party, being neutral greedy (as Gary Gygax puts it - "all good players are neutral greedy"), loot his body and search the room before properly giving last respects to Zorak's corpse.

The room was similar to room N73. Several tubes leading to a stand that holds a green glass sarcophagus. Except this coffin is intact, and occupied.

Inside is the decayed body of a woman that appeared to be breathing and asleep. The party defeats their curiosity (the same curiosity that got them into trouble with the gelugon) and chooses not to open her coffin.

The party returns to the garrison and buries Zorak's body next to Dugan and Dalron. Afterwards they return to adventuring, minus their best source of Haste, Invisibility, and area blasts.

Rooms N77 & N78: Well I forgot to remove them from the map. The party encountered some more locked doors to this room. Now a little gun-shy because of Zorak's death to a similar door.

Well maybe the maps will tease the players and pique their curiosity.

Room N79: There was a dry fountain in this room. Torin steps into the room to scout alone, but is attacked.

Four dread wights jumped from the fountain and walls. Three of them swarming Torin.
Long story short, the party's 2 Scarabs of Life Protection saved them big.

The wights could only miss the party on a 1. Every round charge of charge would be drained from the scarabs. The clerics were caught with their pants down, and their first actions were either to cast Death Ward or a failed attempt at turning undead.

Had there been no scarabs, there would have been a TPK. But the party made it out alive with some minor scratches, and a total of 5 points of constitution being drained.

Room N80: The party decided to buff up before entering this room. The 6 wraiths and 1 dread wraith stood no chance against a properly prepared party. The dread wraith fled once it had lost most of its hp.

The party chose to charge recklessly into another room before their buffs wore off.

I let them...but one day it will catch up to them.

Rom N75: Another combat against 4 dread wraiths.

With the party prepared, the wraiths take a bad beating. Not having Zorak around hurt, but now the party is getting a lot more XP.

The party stops and searches this room and room N80. Nothing...probably because incorporeal things don't have much use for equipment.

Room N36: The small walkway of this room was safe, but behind the metal bars were over 2 dozen morghs.

The party lets them stay where they are at.

Room N35: This room had several atrocious acts of murder, suicide, and self mutilation carved into the stone walls.

As the party entered the room, they had to make a will save.

Round 1: Cleez fails his save. The walls come alive and Cleez joins them in their horrid acts.
Round 2: While the party tries to save Cleez, Torin fails his save. Cleez gets himself a piercing...
Round 3: More of the same. Torin gets a piercing.
Round 4: Rinse, repeat.
Round 5: Torin and Cleez are released from the magic of the area. But there's a reason for it.

The stone bodies on the walls join together in the center of the room and form a horrid creature known as Pure Vice (which has the stats of a marilith demon).

Round 5: The party attacks it. It attacks back with all 11 of its attacks. Valden takes just under 50hp in damage.
Round 6: Valden, Torin, and Cleez wail into her. Krieg heals Valden. Pure Vice rolls much better this round and deals 80 points of damage to Valden.
Round 7: Krieg casts Heal on Valden. The party takes her down before she gets to attack again.

No treasure again!

Room N34: This room has 2 very deep pits with piles of bones in each. There were also things moving in the pits, with some kind of gore rimming them.

The party smelled a trap and left well enough alone.

Room N33: The room with the undead jerks harassed the party. The party covered their ears and left.

Back to the garrison they went.

Session over.
See you in a few weeks.

Session #35

Ok, trying to go through this quickly.

Well Dale got sick once again. So he ended up missing his last session for 2+ months. I have this urge to pick on him for it, but I do that enough when he's around.

Also, I found out earlier at work that day that I'd be flying to Chicago and stay there until Thursday (the day before Session #36). This meant that I had 2 days to prepare, and updating this blog was not that high of a priority.

Map

The party stopped at the last session just as they were about to charge through another door before their combat buffs wore off.

Room N56: This room had a lot of crudely done art on the room. It also had 4 skeleton hordes...

Round 1: The party stays close together as Valden puts up a Blade Barrier that shreds the mindless skeleton horde nearest to the party. Two of the other skeleton hordes charge towards the party, and the Blade Barrier. The fourth horde runs to the southwest corner of the room.

Round 2: Melee and minor spells finishes the first horde. The second and third horde rush directly into the blade barrier. Bone chips flying everywhere, but the hordes survive the round.

Round 3: The second and third hordes are either finished by the Blade Barrier or a half hearted swing from someone in the party.

Round 4+: The fourth horde is finished from area spells, and clerical turning.

The party, after searching the room, rebuffs and moves on.

Room N64: This room appears to be a form of jail. Human zombies have been hung on the wall like sides of beef while 4 wights guard the room.

The wights attack the party, a couple of them even attempting to capture the party with nets. But the undead are heavily outclassed. The combat is so onesided it lasts 2 rounds.

The party, not knowing that it was a big room change, charges into the next room. Combat continues with new combatants added to the intiative stack.

Room N67: This room was set up like an courtroom. There were witnesses, a jury, 2 barristers (lawyers), a scribe (poor guy didn't have a stenograph either), 4 bailiffs, and a judge on a throne.

Round 3: The party charges into the room. The undead attempt to fight the party and are slaughtered by the party.
The Judge simply bangs his giant gavel, calling for order.

Round 4: The remaining chump undead are dispatched with barely a notice by the party.
The Judge says, "I have passed judgment on and the sentence is death." He then uses his bodak death gaze attack on Torin. Torin saves, but this attack sobers the party a bit.

Round 5: All other undead are gone, so the party focuses on the Judge. He has already taken about 30% of his hp in damage from previous rounds, and the party leaves him this round with maybe 20% of his remaining.
The judge swings his gavel (a +2 thundering warhammer), at Senmonious and solidly connects.
The judge was actually a bodak/ghast/mummy/allip/vampire. So his hit on Senmonious did some nice damage and required him to make a save versus level drain, mummy rot, and later ghast stench. All were made. Dang paladins.

Round 6: Goodbye Judge.

The party searched the room (part of the kill a monster and take its treasure routine), and they found the Judge's stash of items collected from years of convictions and evidence collection.

Note: I did cut down the amount of XP gained because this encounter was not as tough as it was meant to be. The encounter was supposed to involve the party being captured and put before the Judge. Obviously, that didn't happen. I'm not even sure it could have happened.

The book actually says to roll the stuff up randomly (except for the Judge's gavel and his +3 mithril shirt). So we did.
4d6 mundane items
2d6 minor magic items
1d6 medium magic items
2 major magic items

I don't have a list of what every single thing was, but it was mostly simply items except for a much needed Scarab of Protection. They had also just paid for one of those scarabs.

They immediately used Wind Walk to return to the garrison to identify and sell the stuff they don't need.

Their newly bought equipment was finally delivered during this time as well.

After over a day of resting, the party returns to where they left off except for Senmonious, who had been recalled by the garrison for some important mission.

Room N63: A near empty storage room. Nothing in here but broken rope and dulled chisels and hammers.

Room N61: Another near-empty storage room. It would have been inhabited, but since the local boss is gone, they left.

Room N62: Yet another near-empty storage room.

Room N58: This was once a guardroom that is now empty because their boss is gone.

Room N57: Another empty room because the Judge is dead.

Room N59: And yet another empty room because the Judge is gone.

Room N69: This room was smooth and full of pock-marks. Torin entered the rooms and was blasted by jets of acid for 20d6 damage. He failed his save and got out of that room to get healed.

Room N70: The party had to use a Knock charge from their wand to get through this door. All they found was some broken statues.

Room N71: This room was fun for the DM. A ghost occupied this room. Actually it was just a light white piece of cloth in a fog filled room. The fog and wind kept the cloth aloft. That gave it some semblance of motion. After some very careful testing, and 5 minutes later, the party entered the room to discover the trick.
Now I just need to make a similar room with a real ghost.

Room N72: This room had a lovely fountain in it. Well not really. It was a nasty ancient fountain with blood flowing in it.

For some odd reason, the party chose not to drink from the fountain.

And we called it a night after that.

Session #34

Well this session was about standard.

Much time was spent on "shopping" (read last session), but when the group got moving, they cleared a lot of space. Granted, most of that space was a result of huge rooms more than anything else though.

Joe has decided to no longer be game with us. His reasons are that he is too busy in his personal life and job to continue playing with us. There is more to the story than that, but eh.

After the next session, Dale will be on a 2 month hiatus. His son has some Friday night high-school responsibilities that Dale needs to be involved in.

As a result, Senmonious will be phased out of the game (returns to the garrison) and will return once Dale returns. But we can't do that with Zorak. The group needs an arcane caster desperately, so Zorak will remain with the group as a 1/2 XP NPC. One of the players will control his in-game actions, and I will deal with his leveling and such. Joe was kind enough to leave a list of Zorak's spell choices, making that part easier.

But if one of the players loses their PC, they will not be taking over Zorak as their own. If the player chooses to take an arcane caster, then Zorak will be phased out. With Zorak only get 50% xp 100% of the time, he will fall behind fast, so their may be good need for a wizard at some point.

So now we're on the lookout for 1-2 more players. We've posted notices at YottaQuest and other local gamestores, and have put a couple of various threads online in some "players seeking players" forums. So far we've had some interest, but nothing solid yet.

Map

The party spent over an hour of game time deciding what to buy and sell. They ended up buying nearly 70,000gp in equipment for the 6 characters. But the time delay in getting the equipment meant the party had to sell their equipment first, and then wait for their new stuff to arrive.

With only 3 tenday weeks total until Tyrus is freed (I was confused previously when I wrote 4 weeks), the party chose to explore rather than wait an unknown amount of time.

A few things the party bought:
1 Periapt of Wisdom +4
2000gp in diamond dust (for Restoration spells, Stone Skin potentially, and any wandering liches in search of diamond dust)
5000gp diamonds (Raise Dead spell)
1 Scarab of Protection
1 Candle of Invocation (neutral good version)
100gp Incense (for clerical spells)

(Afterwards some in the party had buyer's remorse, but oh well.)

Room N45: This room was your standard large crypt; dusty, dirty, ancient, etc. with walls at least 30' tall. In almost every open spot on the walls were the skeletal remains of something long dead.
Senmonious's Detect Evil found that each and every skeleton radiated evil.
The party, not wanting to deal with skeletons that weren't bugging them, moved on.

Room N46: This room was all too familiar; a door with the executioner aspect of death on it, 2 statues, one of the guide and one of the judge, and couple of unlit braziers.
With a "screw that", the party turned around.

Room N33: This very large room was full of pottery and crypts and stone faces looking into tarnished metallic mirrors. A couple of the party members noticed that there were some apparitions looking at themselves in the mirrors.

Then they heard some of the apparitions speaking to one another.

Using your best Mrs. Howell voice:
"Oh my, what are those things doing in here."
"Three dwarves, how revolting. Can you imagine..."
"I hope they don't stay here long. I hear their kind carry diseases."

The party, choosing to explore, moved on.

Room N37: Yet another crypt. But this one appeared as though it were melting. The entire room seemed to sag towards the ground. When the party scouted into the room, it reminded them of the flesh rooms from the Halls of Flesh (region I). The stone of the room was soft, like that of an obese person. This made walking very hard.
Krieg solved the problem by laying a Wall of Stone on the floor, using it as a bridge to get to the door on the other side of the room.

The spell worked, but now there was a bunch of lazy stone-fat bulging out from under the bridge. Although revolting, it posed no danger and the party moved on.

Senmonious did scan for evil and found it, but like before the party was scouting.

Room N38: They never entered this room. All they saw was a bunch of tarnished silver and a magically lit brazier in the center of the room. Detect Evil showed overwhelming evil, so they attempted to dispel the magic on the brazier. When that didn't work, they tried to use water to put it out. That did nothing but change the lighting of the room to a creepy water effect.

Choosing to be cautious, the party turned around.

Room N33 (again): This time the party was checking the door to N39 when the ghostly voices became a little more aggressive in their comments. A few in the party decided that they had had enough and said something back. That's when the entirety of the room started yelling at the party. It had the effect of a Feeblemind spell on the party. Thunderclease and Zorak failed their saves. Senmonious was about to destroy some of the pottery, but his hand was stayed by the rest of the party.

Room N45 (again): The party quickly retreated here and got Cleeze and Zorak back in mental-shape with a couple of Heal spells.

Room N40: This room had a recessed pit area full of stone pillows and other bedroom items. But being as cautious as usual, Torin investigated the room while the party watched.

When Torin searched the area at the edge of the pit, he had to make a Fort save. One failed roll later, Torin felt the most amazing pleasure of his life, and then passed out from it.

As the party rushed to help Torin, a horde of wraiths appeared in the pit.

A "horde" is a new creature type in the WLD. They basically take a bunch of weaker undead (about 30), and combine them into 1 monster. They take up 20', have a 5' reach, and the combined BAB of them all, and deal an amount of damage about 4 times that of a standard creature. Their only drawback is that they take double damage from area spells.

So this wraith horde had over 400hp and got 1 attack that deals 4d6 points of constitution damage. Pretty nasty huh?

To make things worse, turning has been watered down in the region. Anyone attempting to turn or rebuke suffers a -6 penalty to their charisma. All undead in the region automatically get a +4 turn resistance. And on a successful turn, the undead aren't turned, but they are dealt damage.

One thing I changes about the horde is their turning. Going by the rules-as-written, the horde had the combined hit dice of 30 wraiths (36 if I recall correctly). That's impossible for anyone but epic clerics to turn. So I changed that around. A turned horde takes double damage from a successful turn, triple if they would have been individually destroyed.

So now clerics can burn through low level undead, but are minor nuisances to tbe big dogs.

Round 1:
Zorak casts Haste.
Thunderclease gets a good swing in hurting the wraiths for about 50 damage.
Wraiths rush the party (they almost go for the free hit on Torin, but choose to deal with the moving living first). They hit, but Thunderclease saves and shrugs off the constitution drain.
Krieg and Valden both successfully turn. Combined they deal over 100hp damage to the horde.
Senmonious fails his turn check.

Round 2:
Zorak, using his Rod of Lesser Maximize spell, drops a Fireball on the horde. They fail their save and take 120 points of damage.
Thunderclease deals his usually heavy damage.
The wraith horde chooses a new target, but Senmonious makes his save as well.
Krieg and Valden finish the horde off with their combined turns.

Torin wakes up a couple of minutes later. Senmonious detects the faint, lingering evil in Torin as a result of his ordeal in the pit. A few minutes later, the evil faded away.

Room N39: This room was small, but it's arched ceiling was high. The stone of the room shown various dark creatures ritualistically scarring themselves and others. Some even shown dark acts of suicide.

Torin investigated the small room alone. Then he had to make a Will save or begin to scar himself. He made the save and left the room.

Room N41: Another small arched room. But instead of the walls showing acts of scarring and suicide, it showed hundreds of pain-wracked faces, and a giant skull at the top of the arched ceiling that spewed forth a liquid as part of the art of the room.

When Torin investigated the room (alone again), he had to dodge a fireball that shot out from the skull at the top of the room. He easily dodged it.

The party, not wanting to deal with the trap, had Zorak cast Disintegrate on the skull. But that was a bad idea. With the keystone of the arched room now dust, the room began to fall in. The party was able to get out in time and close the door.

They won't be returning to that room anytime soon.

Rooms N50, N51, & N52: Empty rooms (for the most part). (Another minor complaint about the WLD - it was rushed out the door too quickly, some rooms disappeared. Had I remembered to, I could have looked up online the missing rooms. But I didn't.)

Room N53: This small room was full of undead. Eight wights used their whips to get a horde of skeletons to clean the walls of this room.

The combat was just a speedbump. The party's abilities quickly cleared the undead.

The only thing of interest was that as soon as Torin entered the room (read as "the first living thing entering the room...) a cloud of blue ash filled the room. It was burnt othur fumes again. Torin made his save, but got out of there.

Coincidentally, the skeletons were cleaning blue powder off the walls until the party barged in.

This region's giant doors had prevented their detection spells from working through them. But now there were regular doors. The south door showed nothing, but the north door showed another horde.

The party cast their buff spells, then charged in...

Room N54: A measly pile of skeletons barely stood a chance against the party's power. One maximized fireball, and 2 turns made the skeletons a footnote.

The party, who had just cast the majority of their buff spells, decided that they weren't going to waste them.

Sooo...

Room N55: Empty. (Intentionally...not left out.)

The party was about to charge through the eastern door of room N53, but the DM called for an end to the evening.

He was tired. It was late. And he had to deal with two drunk women.

Chill out ya perv. Nothing happened.

Session #33

The hiatus is over.

Sorry for the extended delay. Life has been busy with family related fun. And it didn't help that the local casino-riverboats added Texas Hold'em tables. Goodbye $50.

This session was pretty interesting. The DM played Civilization III while the party was dealing with a puzzle, mostly so he wouldn't give away any secrets by accident. Well it's happened before...

Brian could not make it this week. He told us why, but I forgot what it was. Joe could not make it either. He had a bridal-shower or something like that to go to. So Torin was played by Justin and Zorak was played by Aaron.

Map

Ok, going through entirety of the what the party did this session in-depth would be madness.

Most of the evening consisted of them lighting braziers, putting out braziers, relighting braziers, taking trap damage, healing trap damage, and trying to open doors. Not necessarily in that order.

First the party had to rest from their previous session. They returned to their fort. Which, by the way, Aaron will be working on outside of the game. But since Krieg has 0 skill points put into Knowledge: Engineering, Aaron is limited to creating DC10 items on the fort.

Well the fort currently just has 3 walls, a doorless opening, some basic parapets, and a set of stairs leading to the parapets.

First up for watch was Senmonious. He saw an interesting sight. At the edge of his angelic vision he was able to make out a skirmish between 2 apparition forces. Senmonious took no action, but paid attention. Once one side won, the scene faded.

Then for 2nd watch, a skeletal figure approached Thunderclease. It was dressed in rotted, but rich robes. And its eye-sockets each held a pin-point of strong red light.

The lich spoke to him in a calm and elegant fashion, "Pardon me, but you wouldn't happen to have any diamond dust would you?"

"Uh...no..."

"Hmmm. That is a shame. If you happen to come by some, would you please let me know?"

"Uh...yeah..."

"Thank you."

Well before either Senmonious or Cleez could inform the rest of the party, they were attacked.

It was a well planned attack too.

Seven greater shadows rushed the party, through the walls of their fort. And they did it just as the party was doing their morning preparations. This meant that although everyone had their standard equipment on, the casters didn't have a chance to cast their breakfast spells and still had their spells from the previous day. And the shadows were able to rush in unnoticed because of the change in activities in the group (think of it as a shift change).

Surprise Round: The shadows just rush into the fort at their max speed.
Round 1: Shadows get their attacks, most hit. Zorak is hit twice, bringing him to 4 strength. Thunderclease is hit twice, with one as a crit. Without any buffs or raging, he is reduced to 9 strength. Senmonious takes a single hit for a few points.

Zorak is faced with a decision; Haste and help the party, but then face 3 attacks from the shadows, or Greater Invisibility and leave the rest of the party hosed. Direct instructions from Joe were to always cast Haste first. So that's what he did.

Valden turns 2 of the shadows nearest to him.

Krieg, in a rare feat of double digits initiative, uses his greater turning and destroys 2 shadows.

Senmonious fails in his attempt to turn.

Torin does some forgettable damage, hoping to get a shadow's attention off of Zorak.

The 50% miss chance on shadows works the best on Thunderclease. Out of 4 attacks, he only gets 1 to connect.

Round 2:
The 2 turned shadows flee. Three shadows remain. One swings on Zorak and misses. One hits Torin for a minor strength drain. Thunderclease is hit again, 4 more strength loss effectively negates his barbarian rage.

Zorak casts Greater Invis and runs up the stairs of the fort.

Valden rolls low for his turn attempt, so he uses his Luck domain reroll and gets a natural 1. Afterwards Jeff realizes that his original roll would have worked. He files that under "Live and learn."

Krieg sends 2 more shadows running.

Senmonious rolls poorly for his 2nd turn attempt.

Torin and Thunderclease repeat their actions from the previous round.

The remainder of the combat is easy. Only 2 or 3 of the shadows get away.

The party clerics then pray for spells and spend their entire alotment of 2nd level spells on Lesser Restoration.

The party does not attempt to rest again. They still have most of their "resources" usable. So they decide to take on the guardian of...

Area N2: This door had a large judge-aspect of Death on it. It held scales in one hand and a large gavel in the other.

The party spent half an hour buffing up and casting other spells. The meleers were all Enlarged and Bull's Strengthed. Cleez had half a dozen other spells on him.

Valden cast Blade Barrier, and placed it over the party heads, but around head-level for the suspected guardian.

Then an invisible Thunderclease touched the door.

They were expecting another powered up Shield Guardian with some heavy hit points and damage dealing potential. But they got an Iron Golem with better programming.

It attempted to discern exactly where Cleez was with its poisonous breath. When that didn't work it chose another target. Valden.

But this combat was a let down. Valden took 40+ points damage total.

In spite of the golem's immunity to the party's spells, some good rolling with maxxed out Power Attacks took the thing down before the end of round 2.

It was kind of sad really.

But oh well. All three guardians now lay in ruins.

Now it's time for the puzzle.

Rooms N7, N10, & N12 were all very similar. Each had a door with an aspect of death on it (Judge, Execution, or Guide). And in each of those rooms were 2 statues, also showing the other 2 aspects that weren't on the door. And in front of each statue was an unlit brazier.

This part of the puzzle involved lighting the braziers in a particular fashion to unlock the doors (which were immune to Knock spells and had no locks for a rogue to pick).

The party found out the hard way that lighting both of the braziers in the room would cause a trap. Well actually, Torin found it out the hard way.

The trap in N12 the party knew about. A powered up Lightning Bolt. Something easy for Torin to dodge.

The trap in N10 was a lot of blades springing throughout the entirety of the room. Something the clerics could easily fix if Torin chose not to screw around in the room (he chose not to).

But worst of them all was the trap in room N7. When it triggered, a poisonous gas filled the air. The gas was a powered up Burnt Othur fumes. Torin had to make a DC26 fortitude save or permanently lose 3 points of constitution, with another save 1 minute later or take 5d6 more, non-permanent damage. That will kill just about anything.

And like clockwork, Torin failed his save. He made his next one, but was most definitely worse for wear.

Krieg can cure it later, at the cost of 500XP or finding some diamond dust. Do you think he'll want to fight a lich for it?

But anyway, there are 2 ways to open all of the doors. The first is solving the puzzle and avoiding all of the traps. Or you can choose the second route, like our heroes did.

Just light them all and hope for the best.

They didn't come to this conclusion at first. They tried and tried for an hour, but just couldn't quite figure out the pattern. They were able to open 1 door, but not all of them.

After an hour of this, they threw caution to the wind. This time Torin made his save. (Note to Brian: Torin takes less abuse when you're around...hint, hint.)
;)

Well the party gets all of the doors open, only to find that rooms N13, N14, & N15 each are rooms with another door with a Death aspect, 1 lit brazier, and 2 unlit braziers in front of 2 more Death statues.

After some more trying the party is able to get one door open while only triggering the trap in room N15. It was a Mordenkainen's Sword spell that was modified to attack as a gavel. Torin took some damage, but made it out of the room alive.

Fifteen minutes later the spell wore off and the door was able to be opened.

Room 45: This was you classic Indiana Jones style ancient crypt; gothic, musty, ancient, and huge.

The party relieved that they had made some progress, turned around and left.

But they weren't about to rest in their fort at the moment. Who knows when the shadows will return with friends? Or worse, the lich may need a beating dwarf heart.

So Krieg cast Wind Walk. Dale refers to it as a dustoff spell. I think it is more appropriate to a Diablo style town portal. (I've told the party that it is relatively safe, but 100% safe, to use the spell to move to and from areas they've explored. But using it to scout is a DM-put-the-screws-to-you offense.)

So the party returned to the Garrison in region E.
On their way to E, they found that region I was in the process of being changed. The sounds of battle were gone. And the walls were almost clean. The unnatural evil pervading the area was slowly being scoured away.

When they returned to the region, they received a DM gift...

The newest of the lantern archons were given the ability to teleport into and out of the World's Largest Dungeon, and could bring 50 pounds of non-living material with them.

Up until this point, the Garrison has needed it for their efforts to cleanse the dungeon. But the demand on the lantern archons has lessened. So Mythlyrian, seeing the party's plight of having to use whatever they can find, is letting the party have limited use of the lantern archon gatherers.

Additionally, the Garrison now has suitable crafting areas. This will allow the party to craft and create their own items if need be.

Rules for using the lantern archons:
- 10% fee on all items
- 50 pound daily weight limit
- Even though this is the Forgotten Realms, not every single item is readily available upon deman. For every 1000gp of an item's value, it takes 1d4 hours for the archon to return. This can be modified on a case-by-case basis.

Why did I do this? Because I needed to.
A party of 15th level character without proper equipment is effectively 14th level or less.
While the group's teamwork has saved them more often than their luck, there's a point where teamwork won't be able to do as much. Such as the many "save-or-die" spells out there.
Besides I think the party "gets it" as to how rough this dungeon is now.

I had been wanting to add something like this for a while, but needed a good way to introduce the whole thing into the group.

Now Aaron is working on a shopping list.
Good thing the party doesn't have a dragon's hoard of treasure.
:)