6-28-15 Recap

The Most Dangerous Game: or The Inevitable Yet Totally Avoidable Death of Fladuk Redarm

We started where we had left off, with our heroes awakening in a large cage somewhere in the woods. Lord Vincent Beaucard and his men were standing nearby, looking like they were preparing for a hunt. He gave a small villain speech about how he knew who we were from the moment we met him and that we had been on his cousins ship. Despite some clever parlay from Phobos, Beaucard refused to divulge his entire evil plan "just because we're about to die."

Mr. Pug noticed that despite being stripped of armor, weapons, and gear, there was a rack in our cage with some junky old weapons and leather armor. Mr. Pug immediately grabbed a handaxe and threw it at Beaucard, who deftly caught it. Then Hubert cast a sleep spell... on the guy next to Beaucard... and Mr. Pug threw another axe... at Beaucard, which he caught. So Beaucard informed them that we would be hunted and he would give us a two or three minute head start. Then and his men howled and we were off.

We ran east, which was a direction found pretty much at random, until Lapu Lapu determined a river was nearby. We found the river and saw that it flowed from the north to the south, so we dove in a swam with the current down stream a ways, putting a nice bit of distance between us and our pursuers, hopefully also throwing them off our scent. Oh at some point during our initial burst of running away, Fladuk mentioned that Beaucard and his men were all werewolves, which kinda makes sense with all the howling.

After exiting the river, we continued east until we found a chasm with a rickety rope bridge spanning it. We all hurried accross it quickly and once we were safe on the other side, cut the ropes and let the bridge fall.  We took a moment to catch our breath and don our cheap leather armor, when we met a crazy old gnome named Archibald. We learned from him that we were now on an plateau which was also an island of sorts, mostly cut off from the surrounding area by the chasm. On the island was an old sealed up silver mine, which Beaucard was afraid of. Other than that Archibald wasn't very helpful and seemed content to be a crazy old hermit living in constant fear. We didn't like him.

We broke into the mine and started exploring it. Fladuk left to gather sticks for torches but also, it turns out, to murder Archinald so he wouldn't snitch on us. No one else in the party suggested he go do that. Certainly not. No oneelse thought it was a good idea to cover our bases and that the gnome seemed shifty and untrustworthy. And now, as events will reveal, there's no one left alive who can prove otherwise.

Eventually we discovered passage that opened up a bit to reveal a pit of lava with a floating, flaming skull, that seemed to be bound there. The skull warned us off and told us he was sworn to protect the cave and the silver within by one of Beaucards ancestors. We tried to reason with him and told him the person who made him swear the oath was dead and he was released but he said it didn't work that way. We asked him if he wanted to be released and he seemed open to the idea. However whole this was going on, Fladuk kept trying to attack the skull, with Mr. Pug going as far as physically holding him back from doing so. Eventually, Pug let him go because it seemed kind of futile. Fladuk did attack the skull, and while he did, everyone else ran into the room the flaming skull was guarding. It was full of silver weapons! Also, adamantine scale mail which Mr. Pug took.

Then we tried to run away but the flaming skull, sensing he was duped unleashed a fireball which reduced Fladuk, Lapu Lapu, and Hubert to less than zero hit points. Mr. Pug dragged Hubert and Lapu Lapu down a hallway to safety while Phobos was able to save himself. Fladuk was not so lucky however and the flaming skull completely incinerated his body. The rest of the party escaped the tunnels mostly intact, only of course to find Archibald corpse split in half waiting for them outside.