Greyhawk Session 5

At first I thought I'd lost my co-DM, but apparently he's made arrangements to be able to stay in the group.  As such we had a full group of players so the party consisted of...

Synecdoche -- an unlucky dwarf with a strange accent
Leerc -- a stoic fighting-elf
Nilrem -- a sinister wizard
Slimey -- a mischievous thief
Akzey -- a shieldmaiden of Kos, God of Dooms
as well as their small force of hirelings and henchmen

They began by meeting on an overcast Patchwall day in the Green Griffin Inn.  This was Starday, which was the day they had agreed to go into the dungeon, and so they left the Griffin's smoke-filled chambers and went out into the Thieves' Quarter of the Old City.  Before passing into the Warrens -- the local name for the East Side -- they ran into a group of well dressed men who seemed to be protesting.  They asked what was going on, leading to a few "Occupy Greyhawk" jokes,  and found out that the Dung Gatherers' Guild wanted a place on the ruling council.

The party found it odd that the Dung Gatherers were dressed so nicely, but not missing an opportunity to cause havoc Nilrem and Slimey attempted to coax the protesters to riot.  As they were doing so, a noble and his retinue of toadies and armed thugs appeared on the scene.  His chief sycophant announced that he was the most gracious of all men, and so Synecdoche asked for a small donation.  Taking the patchy-bearded dwarf for a beggar the noble Lord Thirston, gave him a few pieces of silver.

Slimey decided to sling some filth from the street onto the noble lord, prompting the Dung Gatherers to join in.  Soon rocks, shells, and other hard objects were being chucked at the noble and his retinue.  Lord Thirston was knocked on the head, and immediately his own toadies began removing his valuables from his person.  Afterwards they began to battle the Dung Gathers as the party attempted to leave the scene.

They passed by a number of guardsmen heading out of the Warrens and towards the skirmish.  Slimey looked for their guardhouse, and was extremely disappointed to find that 14 guards had stayed to hold down the fort.  With that, they made their way through the Warrens, out of Castlegate, and to Castle Greyhawk.

Very little exploration occurred.  They decided to peak down a tunnel they had not ventured down yet.  They were confronted by a long hallway with several doors.  Slimey kicked one open to find that it was a small, bare alcove.  The party searched this for secret exits but found nothing.  Nilrem, growing impatient with his meandering partners, opened the next door.  Unfortunately for him the room beyond possessed several poisonous centipedes.  These crawled up his cloak and injected him with their terrible poison.  He made all of his saves except the last one, and with his dying breath uttered "Pazuzu... Pazuzu... Pazuzu..."

I rolled to see if the demon prince appeared and got a 10 on a %.  Technically this was too high, but due to it being his dying words I ruled that if I got a 1 on a 1d6 he would appear.  I did.  Soon the 7' demon was staring them in the face and demanding to know who had summoned him.  Akzey and the hirelings and henchmen fled to the exit as quickly as possible.  Synecdoche meekly motioned towards the body of Nilrem, which the demon lord took and disappeared in a puff of smoke.

I then checked to see if any monsters came to investigate the noise.  Strangely, four skeletons did so.  The three remaining party members engaged them in a fierce battle, but Synecdoche was hindered by his lack of a blunt weapon.  Leerc was knocked unconscious by one of them, but Slimey and Synecdoche were able to defeat the remaining ones in time to stabilize him and return to town.

I wasn't feeling very well, so we agreed to end it a bit early.  Before we left, I managed to get the players to divide up our Greyhawk map among themselves.  My wife took the North East corner because she wanted to detail a dungeon in Rift Canyon.  My co-DM took Dyvers.  Nilrem's player took the area around Verbobonc, since he wished to run the Temple of Elemental Evil or a homebrewed version thereof.  Finally, Chris of the Polyhedral Dicebag took a section of the Bright Desert.  Slimey's player said that he would only take a section if it could be the Pathfinder or 3.5 section.

This wasn't really my best session, and I think my co-DM was a bit miffed that I allowed the extra chance for Pazuzu to rear his misshapen head.  Slimey's player has also expressed dissatisfaction with the "dungeon" as a concept, preferring a "story;"  however, Chris seems always to want to skip to the dungeon parts each session.  Still, it wasn't a terrible session, and I did have fun.