Our Further Adventures in 2E

We’re still having a good time with 2E.
We’ve played four sessions of it so far. The fights are definitely faster, but we bs a bit more so there’s a trade-off.

The 4th session had only one big fight, and I felt for a bit that I’d overdone it on the party on that one.
In the past couple of sessions I’ve thrown at them (in no intelligible order):
Buying a house in the town of Winter’s Respite (think of Aspen, Colorado – except nobility and rich merchants). They’ve spent much party gold fixing up the place when waiting for their only wizard to identify magic items.
Several run-ins with goblins and fake patrols. One patrol got them after they’d had a nasty series of fights and “taxed” the party for more gold than last time.
An ogre gave them a fair fight. It also had 4 potions that took the party a while to get identified. One potion was drunk blindly but had no effect (a potion of heroism drunk by a non-warrior type has no effect). Another was later determined to be a poison and destroyed by the identifier.
A cave of spiders and an ettercap that gave the party a nice fight.
A pair of ankhegs were discovered when the party was looking for a missing farmer. They also discovered a magical, and intelligent sword called Galamandrian. It is a two handed sword that hates evil magic and can only be wielded by a good person. It can also heal the wielder and detect magic items by touching it to them.
They met up with a businesslike adventuring party. It was a no nonsense group, but De’Aire struck a deal to trade spells with their mage. The group’s name “Company of Cold Steel” didn’t give the party any happy thoughts either.
They also met up with an elven adventuring party on its very last night in town. They had a fun evening and traded information. The elves told the party that the magical fey creatures of the forest had disappeared, which is what they were really in the area to check on. They showed the party on the map three places where the bandits’ base camp might be.
One of the locations was correct and the party faced off against the patrol that had been giving them trouble, several goblins and worgs, and the town’s ex-sheriff and a mage. The party succeeded in killing the sheriff and capturing several of the fake guards and the mage. In the end the guards were sent to work camps while the mage was beheaded by Stanley (Dale’s paladin) using Galamandrian.
While interrogating the captives the party had noted that the number of people were less than what their tracking had determined and the captives told them that most people went to “the golden shield”. Putting together various bits of information they received they looked for the likely place where this golden shield would be.
First they ran into some lizard men. A parlay later and the party left the lizard men’s home with stories of the area dying and people passing through their land.
Eventually the party found a convergence of foot traffic in a dead patch of land that led to a gold sphere, half in the ground that shimmered like water.
When they entered the sphere, it was huge on the inside, over a mile wide.
After grouping up (they didn’t enter in the exact same point when they entered the sphere, so the distance was greatly magnified on the other side), they headed toward the center of the sphere, expecting something to be there if it was going to be anywhere.
They were right. There was a huge wall, at least 500 feet to a side. There was had much damage to it, burn marks and damage from siege equipment. There were also things moving along the top of the wall. From the distance the party was at, they couldn’t tell exactly what. Nor was there a good way to get closer as there was no cover within 200 feet of the wall.
And that’s where we stopped for the evening.
I have some extra special fun for the party when we resume. Oh it will be a nice surprise for them.

If I recall correctly these are everyone’s characters and levels:
Aerol (Dale): level 3 human ranger
Items of note: Leather Armor +1

Stanley (Dale): level 3 human paladin
Items of note: Galamandrian The Enchantress’s Bane

Arya (Aaron): level 4 halfling rogue
Items of note: Short sword of Speed (unnamed), Boots of Elvenkind

Brandon (Aaron): level 3 human cleric
Items of note: Potion of Extra-healing

Grum (Will): level 3 dwarf fighter
Items of note: Nada

De’Aire (Will): level 1/1/2 fighter/mage/cleric
Items of note: Elixir of Health, Wand of Magic Missiles (10 charges)