Date: Friday, May 17th, 2002
Players Attending: Devon, Dave, Ike, Heather, Erin, and Jeff
Notable Enemies:
This, sadly, was the last session of this campaign. As it began, the party was trying to get out of the ratmen's lair. Unbeknownst to them, a party of evil knights had just arrived and were outside of the lair conversing with the ratmen who'd survived the battle. One by one they ran out into the open, only to come face-to-face with a knight who very face struck them with great fear. One by one, they were captured by this knight's cohorts and paralyzed, whereupon they found themselves taken to a steel cage.
It was not just an ordinary steel cage, unfortunately. Through some feat of magic, those inhabiting it's frame remained paralyzed for as long as they stayed inside of it. Thus the rescue attempts were greatly curbed, but not stopped altogether.
The party was rousted a few times to have the knights drag them out so they could see how much they'd be worth (if anything) on a slaver's market. It was determined that Runic, the dwarven ranger, and Sir Branwin, paladin of Corean, would fight as gladiators. The rest of the party, namely Jaroo, Morgayne and Foranz, were branded to be sold off. Unfortunately, none of the party could fashion an escape, so along there journey went.
They travelled for a few days until they noticed that they were coming upon some mountains, which to those who knew the area could only be the Gascar Peaks. The gnomish rogue Jaroo had been attempting some trickery in order to buy time for a liberation attempt, but as luck would have it (or wouldn't, as the case may be), he was making noise in the wrong part of the world.
The Murmuring Pass is a well-respected (although usually feared) part of mountain geography / geology, known for it's remarkable instability. It received it's name for the ability to start deadly rockslides with even a normal speaking voice. Much care is taken when travelling through this pass, but only by those conscious of their passing, as Jaroo proved true.
Jaroo happened to notice the excited state of the soldiers entering this rocky terrain, and hoped to spook them enough to make a costly mistake that could help them escape. Unfortunately, it involved an innate ability of gnomes to produce ghost sounds at will, up to the volume of three or four people.
This was enough to bring the rocks crashing down, and luckily for the party the rocks took the brunt of the impact, else they would have been killed instantly. However, Madriel's mercy was not with them in the aftermath, as Morgayne was struck dead anyways, with Foranz and Sir Branwin soon after. Only Jaroo and Runic had the strength to stay awake despite their grevious injuries, but it wasn't long before a shifting of the rocks (by some unknown person) caused too much damage to be withstood.
So ends a tale, but with that ending is the beginning of another...