DM: After defiling the hydra’s lair with its corpse and looting its stash, filling yourself with ill-gotten goods—
Falgrim: Ill-gotten?!
DM: Yes, you slew an innocent hydra. You have the option before you of continuing to explore this labyrinth or trying to make your way back to the surface, and reconvene on the King’s Road.
Inferian: So was there anything in that loot pile that wasn’t just money, items to be sold for money, or potions?

In fact, the pile o’ loot included such things, as well as a psicrown. The group has also gone up a level, so Inferian begins designing his loyal thrall. Falgrim curses his new status as group homophobe, then inexplicably spells ‘eel’ with three E’s.

Inferian: Okay, he gets the Craven feat.
DM: Craven?
Inferian: Yes.
DM: Craven?!
Inferian: Yes.
DM: Why would you want that feat?!
Inferian: It gives you a minus 2 to save against fear, but every time you hit with sneak attack damage you do one point equal to your level.
DM: Craven. (tittering) He’s craven. That’s great.

Inferian proposes they go deeper to continue clearing foul monsters from this cave (and getting more loot). The DM briefly adjourns to watch football, as the players mock him (and, oddly, Sioneva) over the idea that the team he favors will fumble twice if he looks away for one minute. Having spent much of their strength today, however, the group decides to return to their base camp to rest for the night. Sioneva ranges ahead to hit out some Survival rolls for food. As they approach the camp, however, they find that a fire is burning there! Sioneva elects to skulk around to investigate.

Sioneva: 24 for my Hide.
Calinai: Hey DM… whatever favorite Pittsburgh player you have just injured himself.
DM: You know that’s just gonna make the encounter challenge level go up for each time…
Falgrim: Damn it, Calinai, shut up!
Sioneva: 29 for myMove Silently.
DM: You creep from bush to bush, Wile E. Coyote style…
Sioneva: I am ninja.
DM: Yes. You trod upon the ground with nary a sound. Sounds like the wind whispers through the bush.
Calinai: It’s a pity the roadrunner spied you. Meep meep!
DM: As you get closer you notice in addition to the fire, which obviously you didn’t leave burning, a quick count now that you’re closer up shows that there’s more horses gathered around the campsite than you had left there initially.
Sioneva: All right, that’s very interesting. Do I see any people?
DM: It’s getting pretty dark now. From here you can’t make out the people laying about, from where you’re at… you’re gonna have to get closer up.
Sioneva: Can I GET closer without getting in trouble?
DM: You can move a little closer here… if you’re gonna go up about thirty feet, give me a Spot check.
Sioneva: Spot check. 27.
DM: Before you creep too close you notice just barely, outside the ring of firelight that’s nearby where the horses are picketed, standing just outside the nimbus of flame where it would be difficult to see him if you were trying to come up unawares, there’s a sentry, or what must be a sentry since he’s standing there with a spear in hand, standing at attention. It’s impossible for you to be sure but it doesn’t appear he can see you, or has noticed you. But he’s staring in your general direction.
Sioneva: I’m gonna ninja away. I rolled a natural 20 for that.
DM: Back you go to make your report to your newly-found comrades… who are tromping and stomping through the bush as you find them! Falgrim’s big dwarven feet trodding the earth as he whistles a merry dwarven tune.
Falgrim: “Take that, plants!” (starts whistling)
Calinai: “Must you turn those boots on every night? I know you feel as if you need to use them…”
Falgrim: “Look, I bought these boots of stomping for a reason, and I’m gonna use them.”
Inferian: “Now that I’ve remembered them!”
Calinai: He uses them every night just to waste the charges. “My boots need to be wasted!” Pow, pow, pow.

Sioneva attempts to remember details to identify their trespassers, but remembers only grey – or possibly white—armor. Inferian deploys his psicrystal, to the melodious beats of dubstep.

Calinai: Uh-oh, a good Spot check! A series of archer shots! The crystal is destroyed.

Inferian’s crystal moves silently inwards, discovering that the sentry has fallen asleep. The crystal reports back that they appear to be military-oriented and identical in garb to the earlier Whitecloaks.

Inferian: “Splendid.”
Calinai: About to kill his thrall herd. You must wait an additional herd for your thrall herd. You’ve just killed them.
Inferian: Eh.

The crystal retreats, and the party decides to retreat and set up camp just inside their cave. Sioneva roasts up a woodchuck. Watches are argued over and somehow the psicrystal is assigned to sentry duty. It rolls terrible on a Listen check, as does Inferian himself, who angrily tosses the die aside. Inferian snores comically, but stops once the DM threatens to penalize everyone’s Listen checks in turn. Falgrim’s turn finally rolls around, and he hears what sounds like wind. With a Spot check, though, he sees nothing but clouds across the moon.

Falgrim: Then I ignore it! “Heh, clouds. Stupid, stupid clouds.”
Inferian: Oh, this won’t come back to haunt us.

Dawn slowly comes, though the group intends to sleep late for their full 8 hours. Sioneva hears something thumping along above them, on the surface.

DM: You hear at first what sounds like a rustle of wind, but as your keen half-elven ears do their bionic thing, it definitely sounds like something… coasting on an updraft.
Sioneva: It’s not the natural wind, it’s an UNnatural wind!
DM: It sounds like a large avian creature sailing on updrafts. You occasionally hear a subdued flap, like wings beating. Looking at the early morning sky, make your Spot check.
Sioneva: 18.
DM: Looking up from the source of the noise, from horizon to horizon… it sounds like it could be coming from anywhere and everywhere, because, you know, that’s the nature of avian creatures unless they’re right at your feat. All you can make out is a shadow, and you can’t make out what size it is because you can’t place how high above you it is. It could be a hawk, it could be a dragon.

The DM swears it’s not a roc. Calinai awakens and gets to be the one dealing with the situation now. She makes a Knowledge(arcana) roll to finally identify the wyvern. It continues to sweep above, hunting, but is drawing ever-closer. Calinai ducks into the shadows, but it passes overhead, then banks around to descend towards them. Calinai wakes Falgrim hurriedly, just in time for his beard to take more abuse. Pebbles fall from above onto the group as Sioneva wakes. Inferian stubbornly stays asleep to regain PPs.

Calinai: “Must’ve landed on top. All right, we’re gonna clean up the camp, and wake him up the moment his sleep is over.”
Inferian: Eight hours TO THE DOT!
Calinai: He wakes up to find a bunch of paper-mache dummies of us around the fire.
Inferian: “What the--?!”
DM: As you pontificate and delay all decisive actions, you see a couple of talons appear above the top of the cave mouth, which you remember was kind of slanted into the hillside. A large chunk of the cave opening is torn away an instant later.
Calinai: And he’s still asleep.
DM: Another instant later, you see a couple more large talons sort of work their way into the top of the cave mouth, and a few heartbeats later, another good-size chunk of the cave mouth has been torn away. The opening is slowly getting larger.

The group retreats deeper down, dragging Inferian’s tent as they do. They retreat as deeply as possible into the cave.

Calinai: We’ve already hidden his body in one of the basilisk corpses. Still asleep. ‘Cuz the way I read gentle repose, it prevents sleeping people from waking up!
Inferian: That’s not what it does.
Calinai: I know it doesn’t.
DM: How far into the caves are you going to go?
Calinai: We’re gonna go as far as we can while moving as silently as possible to keep him asleep and keep the bird from..
DM: You’re actually… keeping him asleep.
Calinai: I don’t know how deep a sleeper he is.
Inferian: NOT THIS DEEP!
Falgrim: I’m prodding him with my iron-shod—
Inferian: “I’m AWAKE – guuh.”
Calinai: “Listen, just stay laying down, we’re gonna move.” Your crystal’s helping…

Outside, they hear a shriek. They briefly regret not attempting to distract the wyvern with statues. Choosing between further into the cave and fighting the wyvern, they choose to plunge deeper down. The floor continues to slope downwards as they pass the hydra lair, stepping into a fairly wide-open tunnel. The walls are oddly phosphorescent, and the cavern grows large enough that they have to pick a direction. Inferian passes his thrall’s character sheet to the DM for approval.

DM: At first I thought you wrote ‘rouge’. Not you too! Level 64 rouge, LFG!
Inferian: That’s actually his class, I found it.
DM: Bar… Barbor.. barb…
Sioneva: Barbiturate?
DM: No, it’s just, his A’s are written like… someone who couldn’t read that well, they’d look like O’s. Borborion.
Calinai: Rouge 4, 1 borborion.

Falgrim’s stone sense hints that the walls and ground seemed to have been moved in the past, and are not entirely solid. Sioneva decides to check the tracks of creatures that might be here.

DM: And this is definitely the campaign of “I never thought they would do THAT.” You guys haven’t done ANYthing I thought you would do pretty much from the outset, other than getting together as a group and I practically forced you to do that.

Sioneva is certain a large-sized human or humanoid has passed through here, but so long ago little else can be gathered. The group pauses to mock Calinai for various freakouts about games, or Smarties being eaten in a large pile. Listen checks are rolled all around, and the party detects that their footsteps seem louder.

Inferian: “Perhaps there is some concealed side passage.”
Falgrim: “That’s a possibility.”
Inferian: “Let us seek it out.” Seaaarch cheeeecks!
Calinai: Ooh ohh ohh, let me use this domain spell I have… not gonna use it for anything else. Detect Secret Doors.
DM: You do not detect a door.

They quickly review the spell, and then it DOES detect something ahead, though no mechanism to work it. Their suspicions are aroused.

Inferian: “Falgrim.”
Falgrim: “Yeah?”
Inferian: “We call upon you to investigate.” Since you have these things called ‘hit points’.
Falgrim: “Sorry, that’s too meta.”
DM: Onward, Falgrim?
Falgrim: “You seem to be a hearty fellow, you go in front! What are these hit-point things you keep talkin’ about?”
Inferian: “You’re the sort who can take the most damage!”
Falgrim: “Why are you talking with my kind of accent?’
DM: Will none accompany the brave dwarf?
Sioneva: I will!
Inferian: We’ll advance… slightly behind.
Falgrim: 100 yards. “You call that slight?!”
DM: Sioneva, ignoring the cowardice of the rest of the group—
Inferian: Who’s being cowardly?! What the hell?!
DM: Decides to stride side-by-side—
Inferian: I don’t like the turn this narrative has taken!
DM: That’s exactly what you would do! You taught me too well!

Calinai angrily lists everything her characters have ever been exposed to as reason not to go first. The pointmen step forward only a few paces before the ground gives way beneath them, and the pair of them throw themselves backwards from the 50’ deadfall. Luckily it isn’t the full width of the tunnel, so they creep around it.

Calinai: You know what would be the perfect plot at this point? If there was spiked walls right behind us.
DM: I’m not just gonna make trap after trap. I didn’t even expect that would catch any of you. Well… I kinda hoped it would catch Falgrim. ‘Cuz it’s a Reflex save. I REALLY hope you all would’ve just proceeded as a group, and then ONE of you would’ve snarked the Reflex roll.
Calinai: That woulda killed somebody.

Falgrim hears a rumble, and everyone sighs at the inevitable boulder it presages.

Inferian: It’s a boulder.
DM: Yes, the beholder is –
Inferian: I said ‘boulder’, not ‘beholder’. That’d be great if a beholder was just rolling in a ball at us.
Falgrim: “It’s from the left!”
DM: A fairly large section of the left wall, it kind of, uh… it doesn’t shoot outward, it sort of cracks, crumbles, and falls away, and a rather large being emerges from it.
Inferian: I’m down the hall! I was making the running gesture!
DM: Which way are you going?
Inferian: NOT into the pit! How ‘bout that?! I didn’t realize there were many options here! There’s “I’ll run back the way we came,”, or there’s “AAAAAaaaaaaaaahhhhhh….”
DM: I guess this would be a Knowledge(nature).
Inferian: This would be a Knowledge(initiative) check.
DM: Well yeah, you can do that too.
Falgrim: I’m gonna take a guess and say it’s an umber hulk.
DM: Your dwarven intuition is right on target.
Inferian: Oh boy, confusion eyes, that’s just great.
Falgrim: Oh wait, that’s a Will save isn’t it.
Inferian: Yeah.

Inferian and Calinai high-five over their Will saves of +11 and +10, respectively, though the former bemoans the fact that his entire sixth level hasn’t shown up yet. Sioneva goes first, as usual, putting an arrow into its gut, the laughs off its confusion with a 25 Will save.

DM: Well, unsettling as that gaze is, you easily shrug off its confusing effect. However—
Calinai: However, you forgot your shopping list.

Sioneva is hit for 9 damage. Inferian blasts the thing for 37 points of cold damage; the DM retcons the umber hulk into the tarrasque just to spite them. Calinai hits it with acid for 22, then Falgrim steps up and crits it for 29, then 46.

DM: You bound up as high as your short dwarven legs will allow you, bring your greatsword down in an arc, shearing through mandible and arm alike. The hulk, like already leaving its segmented eyes, no longer being able to support itself on that side, rumbles to the cave floor.
Inferian: All its treasure is buried forever. We can just catch the faintest glimpse of a hilt that says “+5” before it vanishes beneath the rubble.

Once again the party discusses which way to go. Once again, Inferian is mocked.

Inferian: “I have a raspy voice. Raaaaasp.”
Calinai: One day he just takes a massive amount of damage and his throat is repaired. He no longer has a raspy voice.
Inferian: (overblown exaggerated voice) “Good day, gentlemen! How are you this magnificent day! It’s so good to be able to speak like a normal S.O.B—“
Calinai: (repeated blasting noises and motions) All of a sudden he hears all rolls. “I do a target to the next.”
Inferian: Oh yeah? I can do worse. Say it again, ‘someday he’ll get his voice back.’
Calinai: ‘Someday he’ll get his voice ba—“
Inferian: “THOU HAST HEALED MY VOICE! NOW I SHALL BE THY STALWART COMPANION UPON THIS JOURNEY THAT THOU HAS UNDERTAKEN!”

Inferian is summarily abandoned by his companions, or ball-gagged. They step into the lair of the umber hulk, finding bones and remnants all over.

Inferian: “I wonder how many things actually got past the hydra and the basilisk to get down to its lair.
DM: These bones are very time-worn.
Falgrim: “I’m guessin’ the hydra an’ the others must’ve moved in after.”
Inferian: “Man, it must have been hungry. Oh hey, a backdoor!” We open it, it just opens out into a tavern in the back of Swerengin’s castle. That’s odd. I wonder if he knew about this… “Umber hulky! My friend!” “Uh-oh… uh, hi guys.”
DM: Which one of you had Knowledge(nobility)?
Calinai: I do now!
Inferian: That umber hulk had the crest of King Swerengin on it!
Calinai: He was the king umber hulk.

The party lampshades how these monsters were exactly one day farther out of Swerengin’s direct control than he was willing to ride, which of course turns into laughter and angry yelling at the rude doorman who wouldn’t let them into the noble’s tavern, all those many games and campaigns ago. The DM idly complains about an instant in which his order of fries was in fact one giant curly fry. They loot some stuff, a scroll and a potion; no one is enthused. They also discover a freaking psicrown, in complete defiance of the loot distribution rules; Inferian drools. The umber hulk tunnel doesn’t go deeper than this, so they return to the main tunnel. The DM bemoans how broken the group has become this early while the group argues over what could possibly be superior to umber hulks on the dungeon food chain.

Inferian: Oh no! Superpredators are up next! Sharks, shit! Oh wait, we’re still in the cave. We see a bunch of sharks lying on the ground, menacing us, we just stand back and pepper them with missiles.
Calinai: No. No. There’s dirt sharks. Desert sharks, or whatever?
Sioneva: LAND SHARKS!
Calinai: Land sharks. With laser beams attached to their heads. And delayed fireball launches.
Inferian: No, they’re psionic, they have energy ray like I do. “Pew!” Wilder sharks.
Calinai: And they’re all equipped with your crown. To make you feel less special.
Inferian: Oh no! That crown can perform psionic fly! That’s how the sharks get around!
Calinai: Better yet, you read the crown: “the crown is more powerful when it’s alone.” The more crowns around, the less powerful it becomes.
Inferian: Was this made by a psionic ninja?!

They travel down, finding the tunnel has widened and the glowing fungi have reappeared. Inexplicably, Inferian remembers magical diseases from an old-school Book of Sex, specifically Unidentified Fiery Discharge. They hear chitterings and, bizarrely, squawkings from below as they continue to advance. Fearing Ewoks and Jawas, the party prepares for violence. Looking up as the noises appear to surround them, they spy horrible creatures on the ceiling: hook horrors! But, having reached the limits of the DM’s preparation, the game comes to an end as they prepare to engage the foul creatures.