Castle Amber
Chapter 1 (12.06.2024) - A Meeting of Friends After Time Apart
27.05.1259 Everyone congregated at Quiney's house to catch up, tell tales of what they'd been doing, hang out and have some fun. Drogan Blackwood, Kooxiel, Zengra and Spafflethweep were not there yet, but the rest were - Quiney, Cay of the West, Saghla, Thimpashinash, Gleeg, Cathina, Yintoth and Shmadimaa.
28.05.1259 The party went to visit Zarakhan. Spafflethweep, Kooxiel and Drogan were already there and Zengra arrived shortly after. Zarakhan told the party of a mystery that they need to solve at a place called Castle Amber. There may be considerable riches to be won there too.
DM's Note: I decided to just get straight into the adventure rather than spend a lot of time encountering wandering monsters in the wilderness. I placed Castle Amber in the north of Darfuria, assumed the party had no particular encounters on the way there, and then just read the introduction and it all began.
30.05.1259 The party awake and find themselves at the Castle. They were of course delighted to have gained some mules to carry their gear, but then disappointed to have lost one to the dreaded mist surrounding the castle. The party were given the opportunity to pick different spells, but they (unwisely) declined and carried on.
After a bit of a look around the room where they found themselves, and the outside where the accursed mist surrounded the mansion, everyone proceeded along the corridor and found their way into the boxing ring room. The party found the hovering eyes mysterious and curious.
Shmadimaa decided to represent the party against John-Louis Amber's champion and everyone placed their bets. A number of the party bet 1000gp on Shmadimaa and in the end the total bets were 10,000gp - the maximum permitted.
Once Shmadimaa had won the boxing match (which the DM later realised he had misunderstood and consequently made a right pig's ear out of it), John-Louis decided he did not want to hand over all of his gold and told the guards to attack the party, which he also did himself. Both guards ran different ways around the boxing ring, Stephen going towards the side with fewer armored characters.
It seemed that all the fighters ended up fighting one of the guards whilst the others took on the other and John-Louis. Zengra vaulted into the ring to help the unarmored Shmadimaa finish off the boxer, who refused to be knocked out despite a couple of critical hits during the bout.
The guard facing Cathina, Drogan and Saghla was soon overpowered following Cathina's devastating critical hit and the other, with John-Louis, fell the following round. John-Louis Amber lasted a little longer but could see the game was up and was finished off by a lucky sneaky Kooxiel rear attack.
Chapter 2 (15.06.2024) - Two Bizarre Battles
30.05.1259 Now that the fight was over, it was time to check out the treasure. Saghla took John-Louis's +2 rapier as it was lighter than her +1 longsword and thus better for her as a gnome. Cathina put on the +2 chainmail, as it was just as good as her plate but much lighter.
The chest was opened and John-Louis's money was duly pillaged and everything was shovelled into the Portable Hole. The mysterious eyes had disappeared by now. A search of the room revealed nothing interesting. As the party were searching, a trio of living rock statues entered the room and another fight began.
As luck would have it, the party coped well. Saghla's new rapier pleased her greatly as she almost demolished one on her own. Spafflethweep finished it off with a crafty dagger.
The second was Levitated by Kooxiel and Cathina smashed at its knees with her morning star. When it was too high for anybody to reach it, Kooxiel cancelled her Levitation and the statue fell and shattered, with only a small amount of collateral damage from falling and flying stone.
Quiney used her Fly spell to get involved in the action from the relative safety of the air, and after Zengra had caused the third statue significant damage from his Staff of Striking, Quiney gave the construct a mighty clonk on the top of its head with her own staff. She hit with a natural 20, which was critical, and the statue cracked, split in half from the head downwards, and fell to the floor.
The battle was over! After a little consolidation, everyone gathered at the eastern door in a sensible formation, ready for what may come next.
What actually came next was a group of rakasta waiting for the party in the next room. They immediately leapt to attack, pinning the party in the doorway. Yintoth managed to Entangle a large group of them, but several were still fighting. Quiney flew in to try to get a better vantage point and Cay of the West used a Potion of Polymorph to turn into a python, which he figured might be better in the fight.
As soon as the party had defeated all but one of the rakasta that were not entangled, that one surrendered. Then the party plundered the treasure, Thimpashinash using Luck Points to avoid a poison needle he failed to find on the lock of the chest.
Once all of that had happened, the Entangle spell wore off. Quiney's cat jumped into the chest in terror to avoid being hurt and another big fight broke out. As everybody was struggling away, Quiney pulled out her Wand of Wonder and by chance made herself Invisible.
She pointed it at the nearest rakasta, and produced forth a great stream of butterflies, which were blinding for Quiney and the enemy creature, which they landed on in their hundreds. As this was not an aggressive action, Quiney's Invisibilty was not broken, it merely seemed that a great stream of butterflies had materialised out of thin air!
Everyone was very surprised by the appearance of so many insects. The party was wearing the rakasta down and taking a few hits themselves. Quiney pointed her wand at another rakasta nearby, which was being fought by Drogan Blackwood and Kooxiel, and once more uttered the command word.
Unfortuntaely, this time the wand produced a fireball. The rakasta burned to a crisp, Drogan also failed his save and his cloak went up in flames with a whoosh, and Kooxiel was injured as well as Quiney herself. This time Quiney's Invisibilty was broken. Most of the rakasta were defeated by now.
As Drogan tried in vane to stamp out the flames that had destroyed his cloak and Kooxiel muttered a string of curses in a language Quiney was unable to understand, she thought it best to fly off to the bedroll room where they had earlier awoken.
Healing was administered to those who needed it. By now the party were out of healing spells and most of them were injured to some degree or other. Several people thought the python's appearance strange, but eventually they all realised it was Cay.
After a while, a rather sheepish Quiney was summoned from where she had hidden and everybody gathered themselves together once more. Before them was the strange dining room and everybody sat down at their places marked by cards to join the other ghostly guests. Curiously, John-Louis Amber was now one of the ghostly diners.
Once the party had realised that the ghostly diners were taking no notice of them, the waiters brought in the first course, onion soup. Several people failed their saves and thus gained hit points, permanently. The amber wine was left on the table for each character after the course ended, just in case...
Next came the tossed salad, which led to everybody gaining a point on a random ability score. In some cases, this was much needed! I decided not to have any corresponding ability score losses due to the rather mediocre sets of scores the party already had.