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The party:

1 Druid/Priest thingy of Mielikki
1 Dwarf warrior (me)
1 Crusader of Helm (my friend)
1 Paladin (aspiring dragonbane, also of Helm)
1 Priestess of Cyric (NPC, leaves before most of this happens)^^
1 Amazon (spear style)

So we're in Cormyr, and find about a million adventurers in Arabel. we pass through the city without incident, and decide to look for the last piece of our puzzle quest (a bastard sword) in a tower that reputedly only appears during the night. We ride south from tilverton (I think), and stop for the night. I take first watch, which is uneventful, until I feel sudden cold and 30 ghosts wearing purple dragon armour come and surround us. We know that the tower has been host to a betrayal from a riddle we heard from a Bard in relation to our quest, and when the ghosts point at the ground we start digging until we find old skeletons wearing purple dragon armour. At this point, we see a light through the fog in the distance, and assuming that's the tower, we ride for it. The ghosts let us pass without incident, and we arrive at the tower. As we enter the tower, a priestess of Torm greets us from inside it. It appears she has been captured in Time to guard the tower until the betrayal that happened there was annulled. She cooks us something and tells us that the haunted part of the tower is upstairs, and that it is very dangerous. She also tells us the nature of the betrayal, that the four purple dragons stationed in the tower had watched the 30 purple dragons outside be ambushed by trolls and had done nothing to help them and refused to let them in the tower.

After resting a while, we walk up the stairs and open the first door on the left (circular room, 4 doors). We enter, and see four old but alive and hale purple dragons muttering to one another. We ask them something, but as soon as they hear us they charge us, muttering things like ""we must protect the tower"" and ""die, intruders"". They are experienced fighters, but no match for our party, and are put down after dealing a measly 40 damage to our paladin.

Our crusader, in a fit of stupidity, uses up all his healing on the paladin. This is important for me later.

I go through the next door first, having the highest amount of TP (82). I walk about 1 1/2 meters into the room, until I feel something sticky on my back. I look up, and you guessed it, 8 GIANT SPIDERS. everybody starts laughing obviously, they know the other story already. after cursing, I roll initiative. I manage to kill one of them before I have to perform 6 consecutive saving throws against poison. Miraculously, I manage them all, taking measly 32 damage points.

At this point, they are webbing me while biting me, and we set the rule that whenever one of the party fails to hit them (attack throw -4 ), they hit ME. A 1 means critical hit on me.

Well, to make things short, they killed 3 before two of them rolled 1s and nearly killed me. The next spider bite brought me down to about 2 HP... everybody was getting nervous now... until our friend the amazon rolled another 1, and amazingly rolled dual 1s for damage... I was at 0 hp. We luckily killed the other spiders before they could kill me, but a close shave. The next time I'll just ask the crusader to flamestrike me, I'd have taken less damage from that.

well since the last 3(!!!) times we played I nearly died (once to dragon/demon, twice to spiders), and most of our characters were very low HP after the dragon, we have a lot of fun.

I forgot to say something: the druid/priest player used to play an elven woman ranger... something funny happened to her:

we found a precious necklace, and she (he) tried it on to see if it affected her... turned out to be a necklace of strangulation.

him: I put on the necklace
DM: ok, you're dead, make a new character.
everyone: laughs

played again last night... another funny one.

Situation: after I nearly died, we healed as much as possible without resting (because the tower would dissapear in the morning, and we wanted to finish it. So I started with less than half of my max hp (35 out of 82).

Wonderful. So, we walk upstairs again and check out the other rooms. One room has a bunch of minotaur who seem to not like us, so our druid stoneshapes the door shut before they try to plow through it. One less room to worry about. We then go up to the third floor, thinking the next room could be bad. We open it and look inside to see a large ball with a large central eye, huge mouth and eyestalks. Everybody swears simultaneously and we start to close the door before it speaks: ""Ahem. I hope you're not mistaking me for a beholder."" Ooooh... noo, not at all. It turned out to be a spectator sent from Torm to test whoever turns up at the tower with boring questions about ethics (would you abandon a friend if the situation looked hopeless... OF COURSE NOT). Turns out this question had a lot to do with what happened next.

So, we enter the next room, and see the last piece of the set item (the Four from Cormyr campaign), a bastard sword, on the floor. It's glowing, and nothing else is in the room. This is too easy. My extremely intelligent (for a dwarf) dwarf (int 15 wis 15 str 18/53 con 18 char 10 dex 15 ) says he disbelieves the situation.

*COUGH*

The DM takes me out of the room to describe me seeing the wall dissapearing and a HUGE mouth taking form. A black mouth, complete with fangs, and mounted on a dragon-like body. Screw dragon-like, its a freaking dragon. My character screams RUN FOR IT, and we dive back outside. The Paladin, who was standing in the door, decides to run for the Bastard sword before ducking back out, and takes about 20 damage for it (remember, none of us are on full HP). Once it becomes clear that we can't run, we charge it and everyone except for the amazon saves twice against breath weapon (taking me down to 8 hp 8[ ). The amazon dies, as nearly does our newest party member (a young Transmuter who teleported himself in during the battle.. an accident). I ###### up tremendously on my initiative and attack die (4 attempts, no hits, dragon only had -2 AC... pathetic). Our Paladin puts the other set items onto the sword, completing the set... and promptly rolls a 20 on att throw, cutting off a claw (we didn't know it was vorpal)

continue later.. gtg now

yes, second edition, this is an old story from us

our new one uses 3rd edition, but we've only played it once

continued (and near end):

After the dragon gets its claw cut off, the fight continues although the dragon looks pretty hurt. Now comes the real funny bit^^

Our druid, who was previously unsuccessfully using a spirit hammer (1d4 damg ) on the dragons head rolls critical, does 8 damage... AND THE DRAGON DIES. Imagine how embarassing that must be for the dragon... ""I was killed by a spirit hammer""

so now we have a dragon hoard and things are looking up, we should be able to resurrect the amazon and still have lots left over... plus lots of magical weapons (including another +2 hammer, maybe I should specialize in 2 weapon fighting style... two +2 hammers )

Anyway... to make a long story short, we found out about lord Aris, a treacherous cormyrean noble who is cooperating with an army from zhentil keep to attack from the stonelands into central cormyr. The nearest purple dragons are at least a week away, and the armies will enter the ghost town where we must perform our ceremonies (at sundown) at sundown. These ceremonies are the absolving of the Cormyrean Starbursts (we found out their name), these are the purple dragon ghosts we saw before... they are absolved when they rise to fight for cormyr again. The other ceremony is the ceremony of vengeance, where all the victims of the town (~300) rise up from the dead as ghosts and attack the armies

anyway, before we can do the ceremony, 50 riders ride into the town. We hide (the crusader, paladin and druid in the temple, me, the transmuter and a priestess of cyric [oh yeah, she came back as well ] hide in the alchemists shop. The Zhentilar ride in front of the temple, where 30 of them dismount and enter the temple, while 20 of them stay outside. there are 6 of us to stop them in total. The druid is discovered in the temple, where he climbs to the rafters and kills the first two Zhents who try to get him. After that, he is called upon to surrender (archers ).. so he goes down. And exactly at that point, the paladin starts to sing, trying to distract them so our crusader can create a force ward (-3 saving throw or they are forced against the wall for 9 rounds). It works, although the druid is brought to -10HP before the paladin uses the Four of Cormyr to heal him.

Meanwhile, we hear the commotion outside, so the Mage leans out of the door and uses a wand (with lots and lots of effects, depending on what you roll.). he rolls 19, and a violent gust of wind flattens the 20 who are outside. I run out and bash the first ones skull in, and the mage casts a lightning bolt which takes down the other 19 (!!!!).

The four Zhents who managed their saving throws take one look outside and run away, screaming. The others are pressed against the wall and asked, one by one, whether they would ever take up arms for the cause of evil (paladin has detect lie at will). anyone who lies gets their throat cut, the rest runs out of the city trying to avoid both the army and us.

At sundown, the army is about to enter the city (1000 meters distant). Our crusader casts some illusionary catapults to confuse them for a bit, while the paladin goes forward to perform the ritual of atonement. After he does that, 60 ghosts rise and march towards the army. The crusader performs the ritual of vengeance, and suddenly 360 ghosts are marching towards the army.

Needless to say, we didn't have to do much...the ghosts took apart the army in about 10 minutes without our help, except for the pally, who was obviously thinking about return of the king and charged with them.

We return to Suzail and are granted an audience with king Azoun IV. Our paladin presents the four of cormyr to him, and Azoun says that everyone in the party will be rewarded something that he/she wants. Cyric priestess takes gold and a letter of thanks from him, Paladin declines anything and is accepted into the order, Crusader declines anything and is given the title of Baron, a castle, and all the lands previously commanded by Lord Aris, who fled. I ask for a set of armour (as I get hit so much) and get a Dwarven Ornate Plate with 1/week Teleport and 1/week Iron Guard (immune to all nonmagical metal weapons). My AC is now -3. Druid gets permission to hunt in the royal forests and the Mage is accepted into the War Wizard academy under tutelage of Vangerdahast.

There is now a half-year break for our characters while our mage is being educated and our Crusader rebuilds his lands.

Does D&D even exist in England? I don't think I've ever heard it mentioned outside of these boards...

Typically, the Dungeon Master is a cruel, sadistic person who would like nothing better than to kill your character in an embarrassing way in the adventure...

None of my DMs are like that.