The seaside city of Allentown was once a booming mining town. But then the mine ran dry and the merchant guild packed up their things and moved away. Allentown is now a depressed town with high unemployment and a restless population. Some merchant ships still visit the harbor but less and less often. The latest exciting town news is a story of a daughter of a rich landowning merchant that has been kidnapped. The kidnappers were seen and they wore the colors of a local sorcerer who resides in a tower near the ocean.

Tim and Nate decided that they should immediately go and search for the kidnapped daughter and hopefully earn a reward before others rescue her and claim a reward.

The sorcerer's tower is only an hour away from the town and just along the seaside coastline. When they arrive there are no doors or windows to the tower so they search the hill it is standing on and find a crevasse that leads to a set of stone steps descending under the hill that the tower stands on.

Inside they were attacked by 4 goblins and took a brutal beating. They were forced to flee and immediately return to town to recover, at a great expense to their dignity. At first the gate guards seemed concerned that a large band of raiding goblins were abroad but when they discovered it was just 4 goblins, underground, the guards laughed at Tim and Nate and spread the latest small town gossip all over Allentown at Tim and Nate's expense.

Nate and Tim returned to the crevasse entrance only to be ambushed by goblins throwing rocks down on them from above. Nate and Tim fought off the goblins and explored the dungeon under the sorcerer's tower, eventually finding the base of the tower. In a circular room that formed the base of the tower a giant snake came out of hiding and attacked and crushed Tim. It began to swallow him whole. Nate tied a rope around Tim's ankle that was protruding from the giant snake's mouth. Nate fought with the snake like a fish on a line but in the end the snake got the better of Nate and swallowed Tim, hook line and sinker. Nate finally made the killing blow on the giant snake and used the rope to pull Tim out from the snake's belly. Beaten and covered with partially digested snake food it was again time to return to Allentown to rest and recuperate.

While returning from Allentown to the sorcerer's tower Nate and Tim are ambushed in the rocky hills of Allentown by a large party of goblins. Tim was beaten unconscious by the goblins and a human wizard hiding in the midst of the goblins cast a charm spell on Nate and they instantly became BFFs.

The wizard and goblins took Nate and Tim back underneath the sorcerer's tower where they rested and prepared for the final assault on the sorcerer in the high tower.

On the first level of the tower they notice that the remains of the giant snake are missing. Nate walked up the narrow spiral staircase and opened the trap door in the ceiling. A large gorilla arm reached down and grabbed Nate. It bangs him around like the Hulk manhandling Loki. Tim climbs up and together they slay the gorilla. The third level of the tower is full of odd life-sized statues. Each statue is unique and holds expressions of horror. As Nate and Tim stare at the next trapdoor in the ceiling they know fear. Afraid that a medusa might be on the next floor, the wizard calls for 4 goblins to help with the final assault of the sorcerer in the high tower.

The first goblin pops open the door and is turned to stone, his stiff body tumbles over the edge of the narrow spiral staircase shattering on the ground at the feet of the other stone statues. The second goblin ascends and is eerily quiet. The other 2 goblins run in fear. Nate jumps up through the trapdoor and bangs his head on the stone bottom of a goblin statue and falls back down on his own butt. Together Nate and Tim launch an attack on the sorcerer. The sorcerer is hiding behind a turned over table shooting a magic wand with grey beams of petrification. After a brief tussle with the sorcerer, Nate and Tim are victorious. The wizard enters the room, takes the sorcerer's wand and tells Nate and Tim the rest of the treasure is theirs for the taking and he leaves.

Nate, Tim and Jake head out of Allentown to return to the tower. As they approach the tower Jake scouts ahead for another possible goblin ambush. While Jake is scouting ahead, two goblins riding wargs chase down Nate and Tim. Nate and Tim run to the crevasse and fight off a goblin rider in the narrow rocky path. The other goblin rides off, perhaps for reinforcements.

Nate, Tim and Jake continue to explore the dungeon. The wizard has emptied out his room and left behind the giant snake stuffed and posing on a tree branch. Nate, Tim and Jake explore further and fight off giant rats, skeletons and later ghouls hiding in a makeshift morgue, where Tim discovers a bag holding 5 Javelins of Lightning.

Nate, Tim and Jake discover a large room with 10 sarcophagi and four 3 foot diameter holes tunneled into the north wall. Small red eyes pear out of the tunnels, sand kobolds. Sarcophagi lids are removed one at a time by Nate, Tim and Jake. One sarcophagus reveals a +2 dagger that animates and fly's about stabbing Jake. Eventually Jake manages to subdue the dagger and claim it as his own. Another sarcophagus releases a giant skeleton that grabs the 600 lb stone lid and uses it to swat all three heroes forcing Nate, Tim and Jake to return to Allentown to rest. Before they leave Jake looks into the last sarcophagus and sees a skeleton dressed in full chain mail and holding a long sword. It looks like a skeleton of a hero and Jake decides it is best not not to tamper with it until they have rested.

Nate, Tim, Jake and Drew, finally a full adventuring party, return to the large room with 10 sarcophagi and four 3 foot diameter holes tunneled into the north wall. The skeleton in the last sarcophagus has been tampered with and the long sword is missing. The four heroes decide to explore the sand kobold holes. Most of the sand kobolds have been slain previously so the resistance is minor. After 5 minutes of crawling, another large room is discovered. The new room looks very different from the rest of the dungeon as if it has a different purpose. The walls and a large set of double doors on the far north wall are completely carved with signs, symbols and faces of Chaos gods. When the large double doors are approached they open on their own and offer a new set of stairs to descend deeper into the earth and further from the coastline.

Nate, Tim, Jake and Drew decide that they should finish exploring the rest of the dungeon under the tower before descending any further. They fight a giant spider and a zombified version of the original giant snake that swallowed Tim.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Drew discover a room with a large sundial and a strange mask on the wall. Below the mask are the words. "I'll answer one question, no more. I never speak til it be four." They use a torch to cast a shadow on the IV of the sundial. The mask animates and says "My sister blows like a nor-western."

The party decides to explore the top north western section of the dungeon and discover a female version of the mask from the other room. Drew blows into the mask's ear and the wall opens up and reveals a treasure room.

A particularly large pile of gold took offense at becoming someone's plunder. It animated and attacked the party. Jake stabbed it with his +2 dagger and the dagger's blade is turned to gold and was absorbed into the pile of gold. Jake keeps the dagger's hilt in hope to restore it somehow.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Drew return to the pirates cove under the sorcerer's tower and discover the pirates have left. They cross the beach area and enter a cave chamber with a low running river full of stones. As they cross the river a pair of large rocks stand up and are actually giant crabs that attack. After defeating the giant crabs the party packs away a large supply of crab meat for later meals.

The party decides to rest in a room with only one exit. In the middle of the night a weird noise is heard and Drew the dwarf realises the stone forming the dungeon is being altered. Drew wakes up everyone else to investigate the mystery. The weird noise gets louder as they get closer to the wizard's tower. They decide to ascend the tower again.

First they are met by a zombified version of the large gorilla they killed before, they kill it again.

On another level they fight a two headed troll that keeps regenerating and reviving even after it is slain. Finally they burn the trolls' remains to keep him dead.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, James and Drew reach what was the highest floor of the tower to discover more levels have been magically added.

The first new floor has a black cauldron and looks like a medieval surgeon's operating room giving the party the ability to restock on bandages. They discover odd lizard arms and headless goblin corpses that are missing arms.

The second new level has a gray clay cauldron. Guarding this level are two gobraptors. Gobraptors are velociraptors with sewn on goblin arms and a large metal plate in the back of their head where the goblin brains and the raptor brains had been exchanged. They carry crude wooden shields and axes. The wizard steps into the room and says “As you can see, I have been busy making new friends.”

The third new room has a clear crystal cauldron and the room’s walls seem to be only half there. The walls are semi-real walls leading to a prehistoric jungle. James walks into the jungle and can no longer see the tower or any way to return. Tim walks through with a rope tied to himself. Nate tugs on the rope and the rope drops and goes limp as it is sliced in half. Everyone else tries to get the two to return but eventually decide to join James and Tim in the prehistoric jungle when they see a giant prehistoric snake slither out of the jungle towards James and Tim. Because the tower cannot be seen anymore James leaves a magical mark so the location can be found again, hopefully their next leap will be the leap home.

After the fight the party hears the yelling of a human voice deeper inside the jungle. It is the wizard’s voice. He is screaming "NO NO you fool. Stay away from that creature!" Over the tree line the head of a large t-rex pops up with a gobraptor wearing a red cloak in the t-rex's mouth. The t-rex tosses the gobraptor up, catches him and swallows him whole, then runs off even deeper into the jungle.

The party makes camp and starts a campfire. Later in the dark the wizard enters the campsite and says "I need your help. The t-rex has eaten my gobraptor that was carrying the teleportation stone which is the only for any of us to get home."

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, James, Drew and the wizard break camp in the morning. Jake begins to track the t-rex but loses its trail. A high rock outcropping is nearby and the party decides to climb it to get a better view of the land. While climbing up the rocks giant centipedes crawl out from under the loose rocks and attack. Jake in a panic grabs for his magical dagger that was destroyed by the magical pile of gold and is surprised to see that the blade of the dagger is beginning to grow back.

Reaching the top of the rock outcropping they can see to the north past the jungle a large field with large animals roaming about, too far away to identify. To the west a sea, to the east past the jungle a large tarpit.

While surveying the area the party is spotted by 3 pterodactyls flying overhead. The pterodactyls swoop in to dine. Jake and Jeff shoot arrows and James toss darts as they come in. Nate is nabbed and carried off to soon become a Jurassic carry out meal. But the last arrow shot forces the pterodactyl to drop Nate and the pterodactyl crashes into the jungle.

Climbing down from the rock outcropping continuing to go north they spot a cave and decide to explore it. The cave's only current inhabitant is a giant cave bear. The cave bear nearly kills Nate and Drew and in its death it crushes down on Jake nearly smothering him to death.

The next morning they continue to head north but Jake cannot find the trail of the t-rex. They encounter a small 3 foot tall skinny dinosaur that stands upright, like a t-rex would. The tiny dinosaur takes a liking to Jake and follows him around. Jake works on training him to perform small tricks, sit, stay fetch, ect.

In a small clearing they find a weird looking mound of dried sticks and leaves, 15 feet tall and 30 feet in diameter the party decides to examine it closer. First sending James, the gnome, to climb on top of the pile who activates a giant 30' praying mantis. The giant praying mantis pops out from the debris along with a cluster of its 4' long praying mantis offspring. After defeating the hive of praying manti the party decide to return to the cave to rest.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, James, Drew and the wizard decide to explore east towards the tar pits. They find a giant sloth stuck in a tar pit and hounded by 5 dire wolves. The party sets an ambush with tree spring noose traps, and spiked walls with a plan to lure the dire wolves towards them. The dire wolves ignore the party completely. The dire wolves have easy prey that is going nowhere. Eventually James gets close enough to the dire wolves to entice them for another kind of meal. Running back James hides behind the warrior types, Jake is hiding behind shrubs set with spikes and Jeff in a tree with a bow. Tim uses a Sound Burst spell during the battle and a large roar from the jungle replies to the noise. As the battle continues large animals are pushing their way through the jungle. Just as the last of the dire wolves are slain, 8 female t-rexes appear from the jungle. The party runs and hides. The t-rexes are satisfied with the corpses of the dire wolves and carry off the fresh meat to their den.

The party begins to track the herd of t-rexes and are stopped by 5 gobraptors in the jungle. The wizard smiles and commands the gobraptors "Come to me my creatures and slay these fools." The gobraptors hissingly speak saying "NO!" The wizard says "I am your master, OBEY ME!". The gobraptors reply "No, we are now master." Then appears 5 more gobraptors that sneaked up from the sides. These gobraptors are different; they are naturally born gobraptors. No sewn on goblins arms but they do have goblin arms. No large plate of metal on their heads from a brain transplant, all natural. They are carrying primitive wood shields and caveman clubs. The wizards acknowledges with a "Clever Girl" comment and teleports away leaving everyone else behind.

The fight with the natural gobraptors goes poorly for the party and the original gobraptors withdraw calling off the natural gobraptors with a whistle sound. They are more interested in the wizard. Drew stuns one of the gobraptors and they tie it up for questioning later.

Tim, Jake, Jeff, James and Drew question the captured gobraptor. It refers to the original gobraptors as the Immortals. The Immortals have spawned gobraptors and ruled for 100 years. In a glorious maner the gobraptors will one day rule the world. After more intense questioning the gobraptor eyes start to flutter and its body convulse. A new voice speaks, the voice of an Immortal. "We see you". The party decides to release the gobraptor so they can track it down to its home. At first the gobraptor heads east towards the tar pits then south of the tar pits. They track it to a large 200 foot deep gorge 40' across with a large prehistoric sized tree lying across the gorge acting as a natural bridge.

Drew crosses the gorge first holding a rope with Nate holding the other end. Then Jake crossed using the rope as help. Next Tim, but while Tim is halfway over the bridge giant spiders crawl out from under the tree and block Tim from both sides with other giant spiders attacking people on both sides of the gorge. During the battle Tim cast his Sound Burst spell a couple of times attracting a herd of axe beaks. The axe beaks and the group keep their distance from each other until the axe beaks get brave enough to fetch the fine dining of giant spider corpses. After feasting they run away. To this day no one has ever killed an axe beak.

The party finds a thick thorny area that seems defensible for the night. During the night yellow eyes stare out from the darkness but never get too close. Jake finds the gobraptor's trail again and along the way is an allosaurus and a stegosaurus facing off. The two dinosaurs circle each other neither one moving in close enough to attack but clearly hostile to each other. After circling each other a few more times, the allosaurus reaches over a row of brush and takes a bite from an already dead baby allosaurus. It's mother gives up and wanders away. The party decides to try and kill the baby killing allosaurus.

Jeff moves in for a backstab and trips over the allosaurus's tail. Everyone else jumps in and attacks. The allosaurus bites a big chunk out of Drew and generally tosses around everyone else around. Nate launches a javelin of lightning, finally after much damage is done to both sides the party strikes a killing blow on the allosaurus.

The party finds another defensible thorn brush area next to a natural rock wall and spends the night resting. Again the yellow eyes stare at them at night but not for too long. They ran away in unison like they had a purpose.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff continue to easily follow the trail even though the gobraptor trail is several days old. Jake realizes that this trail is way too obvious. It must be deliberate. As they follow the trail the vegetation in the area begins thinning out and becoming less jungle and more scrub-like. A large meadow is discovered with about 100 brontosauruses roaming and feeding, the trail leads through it. Tim casts a Silent spell on the party and they move through the herd without spooking the brontosauruses.

On the other side the vegetation ends altogether and turns into a large dried broken ground desert that can be seen for miles. They decide someone should climb a nearby tree and see what is up ahead. First Jake tries and gets all tangled up in vines failing to get any height. Next Jeff tries to climb the same tree and also finds himself tangled in vines on the trunk of the tree. After a few minutes they both break out in hives and realize the tree vines are actually poison ivy.

Another tall tree further back is found and climbed by James. Many miles away on the far side of the desert is a volcano. The trail seems to head in that direction. It is decided that they should wait until dark to start crossing the desert to avoid spying eyes from the other side of the desert. So they head back to the defensible thorn brush area next to the natural rock wall to wait. As it gets dark the yellow eyes return. This time getting closer. Tim casts a Light spell and giant prehistoric hyenas are seen. The hyenas at first back off but then move closer. Eventually a pair of braver hyenas move in to attack. A third has snuck around to the back, leaps on the rock wall and pounces at Jeff. After the battle the party decides to rest until the next day.

Early in the morning a party of 5 gobraptors are spotted by Tim some distance away. They have just finished crossing the desert and seem to be discussing some plan. The gobraptors then move west as if they were tracking down something themselves. The party decides to follow the gobraptors. Eventually they follow the gobraptors all the way to the gorge. The fallen tree over the gorge is burning and the gobraptors adding oil to the fire. The party attacks the gobraptors and defeats them but the bridge is gone.

They decide to go back to their thorn brush hideout until dark. It takes all night but the party crosses the desert and makes it to the foot of the volcano. They find crudely carved steps and follow them up. Reaching near the top are two gobraptors guarding a cave opening into the volcano that is secured by a crudely made wooden door. The party sets up a tripwire trap on the steps and lures the gobraptors closer using the last of their giant crab meat. The first gobraptor trips, stumbles and takes down Tim in the process with its 500 pounds of momentum. Jeff and Jake are on the side shooting arrows at the gobraptors. Once they are slain the party approaches the closed crude wood door.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, James, Drew approach the crude wooden door. It opens easily and they peer into the cave entrance. The air is foul with a rotten egg smell. The options are uphill to the left, uphill straight ahead or downhill to the right. Always take the right. The first chamber they encounter has 4 sickly gobraptors. Easy fight. The next chamber has 4 more gobraptors already dead from the poisonous gas. They sneak into the next chamber to find a prehistoric sized red scaled salamander creature possibly sleeping. Jeff sneaks up behind it and backstabs the creature. James casts a Hypnotic Pattern spell and the poor creature idly stares as the rest of the group runs up and kills the giant monster. The question “Could this creature breathe fire?” is never answered. Some questions are better not answered.

Next they sneak towards the next room and overhear a conversation.

Guardian naga talking with a Type I demon
Demon: So what do you do, ask riddles?
Naga: No no no, that is what those pansy sphynx do. I specialize in puzzles.
Demon: So what is that writing on the wall? A riddle?
Naga: Nonsense, it's a clue. Completely different.
Demon: Whose treasure are you guarding?
Naga: Oh those so called Immortals. It turns out they stole quite a bit from a wizard.
Demon: Ahhhh. They made blood pacts with my supremes. They are going to be around for a long time.
Naga: So how did you get stuck here? There are no tasty human souls for you to consume.
Demon: Blah, these gobrator souls taste like dried turkey. I always loved the taste of a welleaged elf soul the best.
Demon: Well I am stuck here for the next 1,000 years as punishment. I embarrassed my boss in front of his boss. Some plucky band of adventurers in a dungeon destroyed my material form and my brother‘s material body too after I summoned him in. So I asked my boss to come along next time to get revenge on them. And guess what? We both ended up rematerializing in hell after an embarrassing defeat. So then I tell him so what? They teleported to some giant floating green octahedron, we will never see them again. That is when he got as hot as hell. He screamed at me that if we have lost them we can’t punish them and that makes him look bad, someone is going to get punished. So he decided to punish me.
Naga: Well stay away from those Immortals. I looked at one using True Vision. What I saw made no sense but it completely creeped me out.
Demon: Well I better be moving along. Those air breathers don't live very long in this place and I am expecting a fresh batch soon.

They await for the demon to walk out hiding behind natural stone columns in ambush. Tim buffs everyone with spells and they jump him as he enters the cave chamber. James stuns him with a Color Spray spell then the rest of the party finishes him off easily.

The naga is now waiting for the party to enter. She spits poison on Drew as they enter. Drew the dwarven monk makes his poison save and only takes 20 damage. The fight goes poorly for the naga and it spends most of its time healing itself in hopes of getting a good poisonous bite in. After it is slayed the party finds the clue written on the wall and a set of 5 levers.

Five in all, the third is first and the fourth is second to last.
Many tries are made but finally Jeff gets the correct order. As for the answer I won’t tell. Correctly pulling the levers opens a secret door into another room with a large lava rock grinding wheel made out of lava rock with 4 push poles poking out.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, James, Drew exit the cave to rest on the front porch. As soon as they settled down the new recruits the demon was talking about showup. The party sees 6 gobraptors walking up the steps of the volcano. Looking around the party notices 4 boulders appropriately sized for rolling downhill. After killing one gobraptor and wounding another with the boulders, James sets up a marble trap on the steps using his sling bullets. Jake and Jeff shoot volleys of arrows taking out another gobraptor. What is left of the gobraptors slipping on the steps is swiftly taken out and the party finds the rest of the day and night relaxing.

The party decides to reenter the cave and return to the room with the large lava rock grinding wheel. Before they reach the room they can see bright flames from inside, sneaking up they see 4 small fire salamanders pushing the wheel around with a large barking voice coming from a source unseen. After a while the small fire salamanders stop and start pushing the wheel in the opposite direction. One of the small fire salamanders notices the party watching them and screams out. From around the corner arrives a full sized large fire salamander. Jake steps up and rolls a quadruple hit (open-ended crits) and slices the creature in half with one swing for 40 damage. The rest of the fire salamanders run in fear.

After way too much time and overly obvious hints the party eventually realises the large lava rock grinding wheel is a large combination lock. Jeff uses his thief ears to hear the clicks on the tumblers and the safe is cracked.

Inside is:
20k in gold
Captain Jack Sparrow’s Compass: Once per day it will point to your heart's desire. 50% chance that the user and the compass disagree on what is most desired on that day. The closest McDonalds is often the path of desire.
Wand of Wonder
Bracers of Defense AC: 4
Cloak of Displacement: +2 cloak and every first attack misses.
Dust of Disappearance: 30 personal doses. Each dose lasts d10+10, 10 minute increments
Eversmoking Bottle
Figurines of Wondrous Power: Sabre-Tooth Tiger.
Gauntlets of Dexterity: +2 Dex
Necklace of Missiles

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, James and Drew decide to follow the smaller fire salamanders through the double doors and down the corridor. They discover to their left a 60’ lava pool with a small island in the middle with a magical pedestal on the island. To their right a large lava lake with a pair of odd looking 5 foot roundish boulders. Near the shoreline there is a pile of giant 12” pearls. Drew approaches the boulders and discovers they are even hotter than the lava so he does not get any closer. The party decides to examine the giant pearls. As soon as Drew touches a giant pearl the boulders react and close in blocking the party’s exit. These are Horta, straight out of the original Star Trek from planet Janus VI. When badly injured Hortas move into the lava and quickly heal up. The 12” pearl colored Horta eggs are protected and the party is forced to retreat.

As the party is retreating a large swoosh of air is heard and the wizard is back again and on the small island in front of the pedestal. He is protected by both a Minor Globe of Protection and Protection from Missiles. The wizard has the missing teleportation stone required to get home and uses it to perform a ritual spell. The party casts spells and arrows at the wizard but to no effect. The wizard finishes the ritual spell creating a large blue portal that he steps through and disappears.

James uses his wand of wonder hoping to send a spell through the portal but instead summons an elephant on the small island. The lava enclosed island is too small for an elephant. The elephant rears and falls backward into the lava and the party takes the opportunity to run across the burning elephant carcass to the small island and through the portal, appearing back at the top level of the sorcerer's tower.

The top level of the sorcerer's tower is the only level with windows. The party looks outside and they see the world has changed. Gobraptors rule the world, humans, elves, dwarves, hobbits are enslaved. But no gnomes are seen. As the party stares at the horror an owl flies through the window delivering a scroll. The scroll reads ”I knew you would be here and need my help even before you knew. What kind of oracle would I be if I didn’t know that? Signed Mad-eye Moody.” Just as Jake says “It would have been nice if Mad-eye Moody had supplied us with a map.” a second owl flies in with a scroll. The second scroll says “This is actually the third owl. I knew the second owl carrying the map would be shot so I sent a third owl also with a map.

Mad-eye Moody is holed up in an abandoned mine just about an hour's travel. Everyone gathers together and holds onto a rope and Nate uses his dust of disappearance to turn everyone and the shared rope invisible for their journey. Being invisible they avoid several ugly gobraptor encounters between the tower and the mine. These goprators look different from the prehistoric versions, they are smaller and more civilized and domesticated. But worse in some ways, some are spell casters.

Reaching the entrance of Mad-eye Moody’s hideout the party solves a puzzle requiring them to dial in different colors using dials inside the eyes of a large owl statue facing the door. Each door is a different color that needs to be matched by the owl eyes. After the last colored door is opened the party has access to the mine. Iinside the mine entrance is a sign stating “Lizards are colored blind”. Mad-eye Moody supplies the party with any equipment they need, he ordered ahead knowing what they were going to need after all. He explained to them he put the sign up because so many people asked “Why the colored door puzzle?” He was tired of explaining it to everyone.

Mad-eye Moody tells the party that they are the strangest group he has ever met and will ever meet. Their quest is to cause a time paradox to undo the gobraptor empire. The only magic strong enough is a magical stone owned by Loth, the demon queen. To get there they must go to the Vault of the Drow. The Vault of the Drow can be accessed through a mountain of fire on a continent too far away to reach. The mountain of fire can be reached by going to the south pole. The fastest way to the south pole is through the Steading Of The Hill Giants. Just three days of travel away.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, James and Drew view the outside of the Hill Giants Steading. It is a large wooden structure with trash on the lawn. The hill giants have just raided an ale delivery and stole all the barrels of ale and now are inside drunkenly singing and making loud drunken party noises. The trash on the lawn is the remains of the broken ale carts and dead human bodies. The group decides to circle the place and look for the best entrance. The guard posts are vacant and it seems everyone is enjoying the ale. The group decides to climb on the rooftop with the help of a couple of grappling hooks. From there Jeff and Drew climb up and into the lookout tower's window and find a sleeping drunk snoring hill giant. They kill the hill giant and bring everyone else in through the window. The group climbs down the tower stairs and into a giant sized cloak room. Two more woosy hill giants in chairs with a barrel of ale between them. The group uses some dust of disappearance and sneaks up on the giants. They attack and Jake decapitates a giant in one blow. James invisibly tries to tie a rope around the other giant’s leg but only gets kicked away and sent airborne. The rest of the group kills the second hill giant before he can alarm anyone.

From behind the large set of double doors the two giants were guarding the full force of loud party noises can be heard. The group decided to go through a smaller side door. With a little exploring the group sees giant waitstaff coming and going back and forth from the kitchen and the great hall. They decide to go invisible again and make a surprise attack on the giants.

The rest of the battle will be described as the leader of the giants saw it.

We were having an awesome party. The fresh ale paired well with the roasted oxen that was pulling the ale carts and also with the baked humans who thought they were guarding the ale. I was telling my prestigious guests, 3 stone giants and a tall cloud giant about my latest hunting adventures when a wizard tossed a fireball at us. He looked alone, scared and dumbfounded as if he expected everyone to fall down and die from one of his puny fireballs. I noticed he was wearing armor and thought, what's weaker than a wizard? A multi-class wizard! Me and my boyz are going to have some fun with this tiny jerk. I gave the order to throw boulders. It was like throwing tomatoes at a bard on a stage. After we tossed a few boulders he looked more scared, like he was going to run away but Broomhilda and her cooking crew were standing there blocking the doorway ready and ready to smash him with a frying pan and toss his corpse in the oven.

That little bastard tosses a second fireball. Now I couldn't hold my boyz back. They were ready to double tap his ass. They rushed in and stumbled on something invisible and all fell to the ground. Next thing I know I see warriors appearing out of nowhere stabbing my boyz on the ground and a prehistoric sabre-tooth tiger leaping around using my boyz as a cat scratching post. Then that damn little guy threw a 3rd fireball. This little guy ain't no minor spell caster he must be some god awfully high level multiclass wizard. I was sure my boyz could still handle it but then a 4th fireball exploded and now I knew it was time for me to save my own ass. I ushered my guest and wife out of the great hall and from behind heard a fricken 5th fireball explode.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff and Drew decide to go invisible again and sneak around the hill giants steading, stealing treasure, without engaging anyone else. Then they travelled back to Mad-eye Moody’s hideout.

Mad-eye Moody was NOT expecting them and was startled when they made an appearance. He said “You're not supposed to be here. How did I not foresee this? But you are not ALL here. I don’t understand. You need to find the chain in the hill giants steading that takes you to the Southpole.” Mad-eye Moody then walks off and starts peering into his crystal ball trying to discover how he could have been so wrong about the future.

The rest will be described as the leader of the giants saw it
Good news & Bad news.

Good news is those bastards disappeared just as quietly and quickly as they arrived. After their initial attack our morale was broken, we were a scattered and defenseless people against those invaders, I am so glad they left. Their departure gave us time to send reports to our allies and to prepare ourselves for another attack. We went on double guard duty and active patrol. There was no way we were going to be surprised again and neither will our allies.

Bad news, really bad news, we have a mole. A spy in our midst. Someone I trusted has snitched and ratted me out. The mole told those invaders exactly where I keep my treasure, even my personal hidden treasure. While we were scattered and recovering from their raid they went to each of my treasure caches and stole my loot. The loot that took me years to accumulate was gone. When I find out who the mole is I will be sure to lock him in my dungeon until I can think of a useful form of death for him.

More bad news, after a week of silence the patrols just gave the alarm that the invaders are back. Even worse bad news, the alarms just indicated multiple fireballs have been detonated. This is going to be a shitty day.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, James and Drew are outside of the Hill Giants Steading beaten and bruised. A few heal spells are cast and a discussion opens up between everyone “What to do next?”.

The giant's alarm rhythm changes again. Two beats a rest and a third beat, over and over. The front doors open for a quiet pause then an army of bugbears march out and start forming a battle line. While the party is still working on a plan of action the wizard, the unnamed wizard from the beginning of the story, appears out of nowhere, casts an Ice Storm on the party and then runs away. Now the party needs to move fast so James summons a dragon for everyone to ride away on. They take off and are high in the air when attacked by two insane and magically hasted manticores also flying high in the air. The first wave of manticore spikes knocks James unconscious, dispelling the summoned dragon that the entire party is riding on. The fall was long and painful at the end. Tim manages to clench Nate in mid-air and cast a Cure Serious Wounds before hitting the ground keeping Nate alive. James is not so fortunate. DOI, dead on impact.

The bugbears cheer and bang on their shields watching the party fall from the sky, then move forward to finish them off. Jeff grabs the wand of wonder and points it at a manticore flying in the air. Again an elephant is summoned. An elephant appears in mid air above the manticore, crashing on top of the manticore and both splattering on the ground. The second manticore has run out of spikes and lands hoping to finish off the already hurt Nate. Nate, barely alive, uses a javelin of lightning on the manticore and soon it is dead. Another dose of Dust of Disappearance and everyone runs off to hide from the bugbears and rest for the night.

Jeff carries James' body for a short time but as he carries the body it grows larger and turns into a pink/purple color. After it becomes too heavy, Jeff takes James' belongings and leaves the mysterious corpse behind.

The next day the party carefully approaches the Hill Giants Steading and are surprised to see the doors wide open and orcs hanging out having a bonfire and cheerfully drinking and eating. The orcs are walking in and out of the place like they own it. The group is still scared, so they use another dose of Dust of Disappearance and sneak into the steading. While walking in they notice a mysterious canvas with a likeness of them printed on it and orcs cheering and making toasts to the Six Saviors.

While invisible they party searches the place finding nothing but orcs wandering about in ownership. In the basement several jail cells are found with inmates still inside. The first jail cell has James in it naked and wining about how he has been chained up in a jail cell for a week, left behind, forgotten. A week ago when the party originally entered the steading James scouted ahead invisible. The doppelganger took him by surprise, beat him up, turned him over to the giants and swapped places with him. The next cell has a human civil engineer that they free. The next jail cell has an elven wizard who despises the group, especially the half-breed Tim, but agrees to assist them for 1 year as payment for his release.

The party finds the magical chain of transportation and steps through and into a very cold and windy south pole.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, James, Drew and the elf wizard wake up the next morning in the yeti cave. A mechanical owl flies in and delivers Drew a magical cloak that One-eyed Moony has created out of the collection of creature parts Drew saved, Cloak of the Winter Storm.

The party is ready to follow the giants into the iceberg crevasse. Through the crevasse a path splits left and right with a deeper crevasse running in between. The party decides to go right. They fight yeti’s and snow leopards inside of ice caves.

To proceed further they need to get close to the deep crevasse again. A strong gust of wind picks up Jeff and James and they slide over the edge of the crevasse. Fortunately they were near a sloped path leading to the bottom of the crevasse. They slide all the way down the slope as Jake moves into the next ice cave and agros 4 frost giants.

After the 4 frost giants are dealt and Jeff and James crawl up the ice slope to rejoin with the party. Everyone moves on to a series of ice cave rooms and fight 18 more frost giants forcing the elf wizard to help with a pair of fireballs. All ends well that burns well.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, James and the elf wizard continue to press on into the frost giant’s ice caves. Deeper in are warning signs written in many languages not to go down the passage. Jake, James and Nate continual forward at full speed with Jake lighting the way with his flaming sword, Jeff is slowly following from behind. At first they notice skeletons with brown speckles on them. Jake goes deeper into the cave and is swarmed by an icy chill of brown mold. In a panic James shoots his Wand of Wonder down the hall and creates a fireball. This creates a backdraft of freezing brown mold knocking James unconscious and seriously hurting everyone else. Jake runs leaving Nate, Jeff and James behind. Nate pulls out his Sword of Frost and swings it around to help camouflage their body heat, all the while dragging James along with him to safety.

The group fight a few more frost giants and decide to hole up in a dead-end cave to rest for the day. After a few hours other frost giants wander by to check in on their missing friends. Jake and a frost giant stop and stare at each other, Jake shoots a few arrows and then the frost giant runs away for reinforcements.

In preparation Tim fills the entranceway to the dead end cave with oil ready to ignite it as the frost giants come forward. Using another pinch of dust of disappearance everyone waits invisibly. 20 minutes later and a large crowd of frost giants charge the cave entrance with bloody revenge on their mind. Tim lights up the fire and the battle ensues. The fiery barrier keeps the giants at bay and the giants are fine with that, throwing giant ice balls at the group. This was certain death for everyone in the group....an end to the campaign.

Jake steps forward and pops the cork on his Eversmoking Bottle, filling the cave and cave entrance with a thick dense smoke. The giants back up in fear. The smoke puts out Tim’s fire. This is the moment for action. The elf wizard yells. “Fly you fools!” He leads the way from the dead-end cave to the frozen 200 foot drop cliff and jumps. Everyone else follows. The elf wizards cast a mass feather fall on everyone and they float down to the bottom of the cliff.

The group still needs to rest and recover but are now out in the open in a wind blown frozen terrain. Slowly they explore and discover a remorhaz lair. Killing the remorhaz the group uses the remorhaz’s excellent igloo nest as a place to rest. Not even frost giants venture to roam the bottom of the cliffs.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, James and the elf wizard explore the wintery wilderness below the frost giants lair. Jake leads the way and finds himself engulfed by a “white” black pudding disguised as a snowdrift. James uses his wand of wonder and casts a fireball on the white pudding, also blasting Nate and Jake’s dino-dog pet.

Further exploring finds another white pudding and a den of winter wolves. James decides to cast a color spray through Nate and onto two winter wolves, stunning Nate. The winter wolf's terrible breath weapon hurts everyone enough that they need to rest after the battle. The group spends another night in the remorhaz’s den. In the morning they decide to climb up the ramp and reenter the frost giants lair.
In preparation Tim fills the entranceway to the dead end cave with oil ready to ignite it as the frost giants come forward. Using another pinch of dust of disappearance everyone waits invisibly. 20 minutes later and a large crowd of frost giants charge the cave entrance with bloody revenge on their mind. Tim lights up the fire and the battle ensues. The fiery barrier keeps the giants at bay and the giants are fine with that, throwing giant ice balls at the group. This was certain death for everyone in the group....an end to the campaign.

As they near the top of the ramp 6 frost giants roll a giant snowball down the ramp. The wizard that has not been seen since the hill giant’s steading peeks over the edge and casts a wall of ice spell creating a 30’ tall wall of ice blocking off retreat for Jeff and James. Jeff climbs the ice wall, James casts a magic rope trick and climbs inside, both avoiding the giant rolling snowball that slams into the wall of ice. James shoots his wand of wonder and he sees the frost giants disappear. He decides to hide in his extra dimensional rope trick space for 10 rounds. The frost giants throw giant snowballs at the group.Jeff tries to climb the icey wall but keeps falling down, eventually hit so many times by giant snowballs he dies. Nate, Tim and Jake climb over the wall of ice and charge the frost giants. Nate uses a Javelin of Lightning and destroys the ledge of ice where 2 frost giants are standing. They both tumble down the cliff to their deaths. The wizard peeks over the edge once again and casts an Ice Storm spell on the group and then skips away, smiling. Nate then uses his grappling hook and scales the wall to chase the wizard but the wizard is already gone. Jake steps forward and pops the cork on his Eversmoking Bottle hoping to gain the cover of fog but unfortunately the high winds blow the smoke down into the abyss below. Even worse, the person blinded by the smoke is Jake. A frost giant’s axe finds Jake knocking him unconscious and his Eversmoking Bottle falls down the edge of the cliff.

James finally comes out of his extradimensional rope trick hiding space and decides to cast another color spray at a giant and through Tim. Tim invokes a blood oath on James. “If I get stunned, I will kill you!”. Tim does not get stunned but bad blood has been spilt.

Nate, Tim, Jake, James and the elf wizard begin to recover from the fight, Jeff’s dead body laying in the snow and ice. Nate oddly hears a voice in his head that is not his own. It tells him “Kill him and CLAIM me as your own.” The elf wizard peers over the cliff and notices that the entire canyon floor is covered in a thick deep pea green rolling and bubbling fog. The result of Jake’s Eversmoking Bottle. Nate sneaks up from behind and pushes the elf wizard over the cliff. His fate is unseen as he falls into the pea green smoke.

A weird overwhelming feeling hits everyone. A poorly worded wish spell from an unknown source has taken effect. The group is suddenly transported to barstools back in a tavern at Allentown. Then their life experiences begin to move forward at an accelerated rate. Their eyes see a fast forward video montage of their lives between the tavern at Allentown and them standing at the edge of the frost giants cliff. All the same life decisions have been made, all the die rolls have the same results, the only change is Jeff is not dead but alive and unhurt.

The group moves to enter the frost giant caves but stop when a stone giant being chased by two frost giants head their way. James cast a darkness spell on the frost giants to hide the stone giant from the frost giants. The stone giant in a panic backs up into the darkness and escapes by heading a different way. The group searches for the stone giant but eventually encounters the two frost giants. During the battle the stone giant decides it is time for him to make an escape, he tosses a boulder at James knocking him out, then runs through the darkness.

The group moves into the frost giant’s ice caves and explores more. They encounter a group of stone giant guests and a battle breaks out. James uses his Scarab of Cthulhu and semi-translucent human sized forms of Cthulhu appear, each moving towards all living creatures in the area. When the semi-translucent Cthulhus reach a person they enter in and possess the creature forcing them to act erratically. One stone giant is affected, James himself is affected, and Dino-dog is also affected. During the battle James and Dino-dog are knocked unconscious and the possessing spirit leaves them. The possessed stone giant is killed by the group with the other stone giants.

Nate, Tim, Jake, James and Jeff rest up and continue to explore the ice caverns of the Frost Giant’s lair. They discover a group of 5 hill giants huddled together in the cold and deal with them accordingly. Next they encounter four frost giants that are later joined by 3 fire giants. James is shooting off his wand of wonder in all directions. First petrifying a frost giant then casting a fireball on a fire giant that backlashes onto Nate and James himself. An enraged fire giant bullrushes past Nate and slices James in two with his giant sized two-handed sword. Jeff riffles through James' body looking for extra bandages when the group decides it is time to rest and decide what to do with the body.

Nate, Tim, Jake, and Jeff rest up again in a thermally warmed ice cavern where the fire giants guest stayed. The frost giants hate searching this area while on patrol. James' corpse is left on ice. Jake leads the way past the descending hallway to the second level. Jake walks into a large cavern where frost giants are waiting in ambush. They toss a hail of ice boulders at Jake. The group backs up into the halfway to form a choke hold position to meet the oncoming giants one at a time. The strategy works great, one by one the giants fall, until...

One of the giants unknown to the group ran down another hallway to recruit help from two ogre mages. The last giant facing the group retreats and hides in the large cavern. The group pursues and as they all are in a tight group killing what they thought was the last frost giant a floating invisible ogre mage wearing flowing red robes materializes and casts a Cone of Cold spell on the group. Dino-dog is knocked unconscious and everyone else is hurt badly. Nate runs to battle the returning frost giant. Jeff runs under the floating ogre mage and shoots an arrow at him. Tim and Jake revive dino-dog. The second ogre mage materializes in the air wearing flowing green robes and casts a Cone of Cold spell on Tim and Jake. Both are barely standing. Jeff pulls out the wand of wonder and shoots the green robed ogre mage. A fireball materializes and kills the ogre mage but also catches Tim, Jake and Jeff in the blast. Both Tim and Jake are now unconscious. Jeff revives Tim, Tim works on trying to revive Jake but by now Nate is left alone fighting the last frost giant and the red ogre mage. Nate gets knocked out.

The frost giant tosses an ice boulder and knocks out Jeff. The frost giant moves forward to finish off Tim, the frost giant swings with his giant axe and misses Tim. Tim revives Jake and together with dino-dog finish off the last frost giant. The red ogre mage has escaped as a cloud of vapor down the hallway he came from.

Nate, Tim, Jake, and Jeff rest up in the thermally warmed ice cavern where the fire giants guest stayed. In the middle of the night they hear moaning and see a pair of red glowing eyes coming towards them from down the dark hallway. Mysteriously it is James. He is cold and his skin is slightly purple with bumps on it. As James enters the light of the camp his eyes stop glowing red. He has no explanation of why he is alive again.

Together again the group continues to explore the upper level of the frost giants' lair. They clear out several pockets of frost giants easily enough. Then a pack of winter wolves attack Tim, Jake and Nate as Jeff and James as they explore frozen human corpses standing upright entombed in ice in an adjacent room. The commotion causes the ice cave to become unsteady. Rocks and large chunks of ice break loose and fall on Jeff and James. James is knocked unconscious. Jeff drags James and one of the frozen corpses that he has cut out of the ice using his flaming sword out of the collapsing room and safely into the hallway.

After Tim, Jake and Nate finish killing off the winter wolves and the tremors die down, Jeff and Nate both with flaming swords cut out the rest of the frozen corpses and gather the treasure found on them.

Nate, Tim, Jake, James and Jeff rest up and decide to raid the last area on the top level before descending to the 2nd level. Ogres are in the room and the battle at first seemed easy until the escaped Ogre Mage reappears. The ogre mage casts a cone of cold on the group and almost kills dino-dog. Jake is so angry at the ogre mage he uses the last Javelin of Lightning to kill the ogre mage.

The group decides to rest in the ogre cave for the night. In the middle of the night 4 frost giants on patrol enter the room. James uses his Scarab of Cthulhu and an ugly polymorphic creature of chaos appears, a sub-shoggoth. It is huge with many mouths and tentacles randomly forming and then retracting back into its body. The frost giants are daunted by the size of the creature and run away. James approaches it. The chaos creature grabs James, tastes him and tosses him away. Gnomes don’t taste good but maybe the other humanoids will. The entire group cowers in fear. Tim steps forward and casts a Dismissal spell forcing the creature back to it’s plane of existence by boldly stating “I order you to cease any and all supernatural activity and return forthwith to your place of origin, or to the next convenient parallel dimension.” The chaos creature melts into a large puddle of bubbling green goo that smells like cotton candy.

Finally the group enters the second level and enters the grand entry cavern. The walls are covered with bas-reliefs displaying giants killing enemies and hunting dragons. Quite impressive.

Nate, Tim, Jake, and Jeff notice an ice boulder that the giants use as a door in the grand entry cavern. Jake tries to pry it open but it is too well wedged in. As Jake continues to pry a frost giant on the other side rolls the boulder over Jake. Jake sidesteps the boulder and the combat begins. The 2 frost giants and 4 gnolls are dealt with swiftly. This area is a maze of caves, exploring deeper the group runs into 5 ogre mages. The fight would have gone very poorly for the group but Tim casted several silence spells to disable the ogre mage’s ability to cast Cone of Cold spells.

Next the group finds a new and even bigger type of giant, a cloud giant. He is covered with flashy and expensive bling. The group rushes in and attacks. The cloud giant uses his giant sized bling club and wacks dino-dog. Dino-dog runs away yelping. When the battle is over dino-dog is nowhere to be found.

Nate, Tim, Jake, James and Jeff continue to search the lower level ice maze. Last night Jake had terrible dreams, he saw dino-dog in a laboratory undergoing diabolical experiments. Dino-dog had a metal cap on and was being shocked and tortured by the wizard. Could the wizard be trying to make dino-dog into a gobrapter? In the dream the wizard turns and looks at Jake as if the wizard could see Jake and silently acknowledges Jake's presence.

The group continues to explore. Jake rolls another boulder away and the lab in Jake’s dreams is revealed. Dino-dog is not there but a drugged storm giant is chained to the wall. After much debate, Tim casts a Discern Lies spell and the giant is questioned. The storm giant has been captured by fire giants and they are trying to force him into their army. He wants to be set free to seek revenge on the frost and fire giants. The group decides to set him free and he joins the party.

Jeff scouts further into the ice maze, he sees gnoll guards. James comes forward and casts ventriloquism and dancing lights to draw the guards forward. They follow like dogs chasing a laser pointer. The gnoll guards and their frost giant counterparts are soon destroyed.

Further into the maze a large well decorated cavern is discovered and the frost giants and gnolls are waiting for the group. Jeff charges into a large group of gnolls, a rogue doing the berserker's job because Nate’s job caused him to work late tonight. A pair of frost giants up on ice shelves shoot ballistas at the group. James casts a Blink spell and starts climbing the slippery uphill slope to one of the ice shelves, Tim following behind him. As the gnolls are being taken out they get a fire giant and ogre reinforcements. James decides it is time to use his Scarab of Cthulhu, targeting the ballista wielding giant on the far side of the room. Semi-translucent human sized forms of Cthulhu appear, each moving towards all living creatures in the area. The ballista shooting frost giant is possessed, a fire giant is possessed, unfortunately the friendly storm giant and Nate get possessed. James doesn’t even try to fight the possession, he welcomes it.

The rest of the battle is tuff. Tim bravely saves Jame’s life several times. Nate and the storm giant end up retreating far away from everyone else. When they come around and snap out of the control of Scarab of Cthulhu they realize that they are embarrassingly standing next to each other and half undressed, afraid to think “What did we do while under the influence?” Jake and Jeff finish killing the main floor creatures. Jeff then runs across the room and climbs up the ice shelf to help save Tim and Jake with the remaining fire giant.

Nate, Tim, Jake, and Jeff move the other ballista to the same platform as the first ballista. They setup camp and decide to rest for the night on the ledge, it is a very defensive position. During dinner time as James is eating one by one his arms fall off, right at the shoulder, a few seconds later the other arm falls off. At first he is not in any pain and seems more confused and bewildered than scared. As the night begins then the screams start. The skin on James' shoulders where his arms used to be, start to move about and bubble up. The storm giant is concerned that all the screaming will summon more frost giants. He grabs James and carries him away to the fire giant room on the lower level and he spends the night trying to keep him quiet. Early in the morning James has grown tentacles where his arms used to be. The newly grown tentacles grab onto and adhere to the storm giant. Frightened, the storm gian peels off James, throws him to the ground and runs away to join the party.

During the night Jake has another bad dream about dino-dag. He sees Dino-dog with a bolted on metal skull cap and a glowing red gem that has replaced an eye. Dino-dog’s movements are mechanical and seem controlled. Once again the wizard looks at Jake in the dream and acknowledges Jake's presence before dismissing Jake with a blinding snowstorm.

Before the storm giant rejoins the group, they are attacked again. A line of 14 strange 5 foot snow balls roll into the room. The rolling snowballs form an offensive line and untuck their arms and legs and stand up facing the group. After a few seconds the snowball men toss a continuous barrage of snowballs at the group. Jake and Nate man the ballistas to fire back. Jeff grabs the wand of wonder and fires. The wand of wonder backfires and shrinks Jeff to 1/12 scale. 1/12 height, 1/12 movement, 1/12 damage.

The wizard appears by the snowball men but he is just an interactive illusion taunting the group and giving the snowball men battle commands. Two frost giants join the battle. Nate ties a flask of oil to a ballista bolt and shoots a frost giant. The fiery frost giant charges up the ramp towards the group. Nate tosses another flask of oil on the frost giant and hits him square in the face. The frost giant goes down in flames.

Jake places “6 Inch Jeff” on a ballista bolt and shoots it towards the snowball men. A few rounds later the shrinkage wears off and Jeff is full size again. He sneaks behind the line of snowball men and backstabs. He slays the first autonomous snowball man and the rest of them simply ignore him. Throughout the rest of the battle he continues to backstab snowball men without any consequences or a guilty conscience.

Tim charges the other frost giant and rolls x5 damage. First a 20 for double, then a 19 for triple, then a 18 for x4, then another 19 for x5 damage. Plus critical damage dice are open-ended. The poor frost giant did not survive Tim’s brutal khopesh attack.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff and Brian try to decide what to do next. They explore the grand throne room some more looking for secret passages. Down an unexplored hallway sounds of a low rumbling are heard as the ground shakes with vibrations. Entering in is a giant ice lizard. All 150’ feet in length. The ice lizard ignores the group as if they were insects. Marching behind the ice lizard is a long row of frost giants. The looks on their faces are sad and dour. They do not attack but continue to march past the group. Perhaps a 100 frost giants, all carrying bags. The group stays back too nervous too to attack. After the entire procession has walked past, the group moves into the same hallway that the ice lizard and frost giants came from. The giant ice lizard slowly turns arounds and begins to retrace its path. The group moves further down the hallway to avoid the ice lizard.

The next room used to store treasure but it has been swept clean with only a few tapestries left on the walls. Jeff pulls back a tapestry and reveals a room full of frost giants, ice gnolls and winter wolves. Jeff quickly pulls the tapestry back into its rightful position and backs away. Jake and Nate set the tapestry on fire to stop anyone from coming through right away. The ice lizard is getting close, so the group move into another section of the cave and are attacked by a pack of yeti’s.

The yeti’s first use their gaze attack and mesmerize Brian and Nate. Two frost giants hiding in the shadows creep forward and drag off Brian. Brian is the storm giant that the frost giants had previously held captive.

As the group fights off the yeti’s Jake sees Brian being dragged away and chases after his captors. A third frost giant stops Jake. Brian’s captors get away with him in tow.

Brian finally revives and finds himself in a different section of the cave surrounded by 4 cave bears and 2 frost giants. They whisper for him to remain silent, Brian decides suicide instead. He attacks the cave bears. The last thing Brian sees is claws and jaws.

Nate, Tim, Jake, and Jeff lose Brian’s trail. They are tired and need to rest. During the night Jake has another dream. He sees dino-dog back in the laboratory this time standing in front of the operating table with his back facing Jake. Dino-dog is performing surgery on a human. In his dream he sees the storm giant’s feet in the background. The storm giant is chained to the wall again. Dino-dog finishes the surgery and the patient sits up and looks at Jake with all 4 eyes. The head of the elven wizard that Nate pushed off of the cliff has been attached to the human wizard’s body as a second head.

In the morning the group heads to the laboratory. Dino-dog is still there, his movements are mechanical and unemotional. Near the operating table is the discarded damaged body of the elf wizard. The legs and spine are mangled and look as if they had been in a car crash. The only other living person in the room is Brian the storm giant. Jeff frees Brian. Brian collapses to the ground still suffering from the delirious drink that the frost giants forced fed him again. Jake tries to befriend dino-dog but dino-dog is withdrawn, unemotional and sullen.

After a few hours the potion wears off Brian and Jake is still trying to connect with dino-dog. Dino-dog ignores Jake as if he could not remember him. Then the two-headed wizard appears in the room entrance and casts a wall of fire down the length of the room, splitting it in two. Two cave bears and a frost giant charge in. Dino-dog retreats to the back of the room afraid of the fire. Throughout the battle the wall of fire ignites the operating table and other material in the lab cornering dino-dog in the back of the room in fear. Near the end of the battle Jake runs through the fire to help dino-dog. Jake places a hood over dino-dog’s head and leads him out of the fire and to safety. When Jake takes the hood off of dino-dog’s head there is a single tear running down dino-dog’s one remaining natural eye. He is beginning to remember.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff and Brian decide to attack the room full of frost giants, ice gnolls and winter wolves. They prepare all their spells. A new curtain has been placed over the entrance replacing the burnt one. At the last moment Brian decides to take a giant sized shield off the wall. He gets zapped by electricity, IT’S A TRAP! Storm giants are immune to electricity so he takes no damage. From behind the curtain ice gnolls are snickering. The snickering sounds just like cartoon character Muttley snickering. Brian pulls the draps aside and inside prepared in a tight battle formation are the frost giants, ice gnolls and winter wolves. They are waiting for the drapes to open. It is as if they knew exactly when the drapes were going to open. Two winter wolves breathe cold on Brian and 4 boulders thrown by the frost giants hit him. Brian, the giant, goes down. The ice gnolls move in to finish Brian off as he lays unconscious on the ground. Tim manages to heal Brian before the ice gnolls get a chance to kill him.

Jeff pulls out the wand of wonder and fires it. He shrinks down to an inch high private eye size again. The battle continues on and Jeff uses the wand of wonder again, this time he creates a downpour of rain. Fortunately inch high Jeff manages to hang on and not get swept away in the 1” deluge of rain water.

The group first kills the gnolls and winter wolves, then they fight the frost giants causing the queen to charge in. After another frost giant is slain the king rushes in. After another frost giant is slain the two-headed wizard walks in and casts a Cone of Cold spell on everyone. Tim, Jeff and dino-dog are knocked unconscious. Wounds are bound just enough to stop further bleeding and death. The two-headed wizard laughs and skips away with the two heads talking to each other carrying on a conversation. Brian, Jake and Nate finish killing the rest of the frost giants.

Tired and hurt the group rests up. After recovering from the battle they decide to explore the rest of the ice cave. They discover a hill giants' refugee camp and quickly dispatch them.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff and Brian continue to search the nearly empty ice caverns. They fight ice toads, search every nook and cranny of the caverns but miss a secret entrance stopped up with a large ice boulder. An old white dragon breaks through the clogged entrance and breathes its icy cold breath upon the group. Following behind the dragon is a large group of ice gnolls. Brian moves up and engages in hand-to-hand melee with the dragon, the rest of the group fight the gnolls. The dragon backs away from Brian after getting clobbered by Brian, gnolls move in to protect the dragon. The dragon is waiting for his breath weapon to recharge, but before the dragon gets the chance Brain uses his lightning bolt and slays the dragon.

A painful roar of anguish is heard from inside the chamber where the gnolls are still streaming out of. The white dragon’s mate is enraged. The second white dragon breaks out of the chamber and gives a mighty and terrifying roar. Dino-dog, Jeff, Tim and Nate run in fear leaving Jake and Brian behind to face the other dragon. Jake backs up and the dragon breathes on him directly. Brian gets surrounded by a pack of gnolls. To escape Brian smashes a gnoll and makes a run for it following the path Tim took. Jake runs away in a different direction chasing Dino-dog.

Having won the battle the white dragon pushes it way through the cave and outside to the abyss. He spreads his wings and flies away. The rest of the gnolls run for the magic portal that leads to the kingdom of the fire giants. A day later the entire group also walks through the magic portal to battle the fire giants.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff and Brian stand in a large open plain, bare of any vegetation. The landscape is mars-like. Broken rocks, steam geysers, and open pools of lava. Miles away an active volcano is visible spewing lava out from its top. They are standing on a dirt road that leads to a large rock hill half a mile away. They follow the road to what looks like a 40’ x 40’ black polished stone wall. Jeff examines the wall and discovers that it is actually a highly skilled crafted pair of double doors. No need for a lock or any brace for the door, it’s too large and heavy to be opened by any creature at less than fire giane size. Brian opens it.

Nate uses his dust of disappearance and everyone walks in invisible. The hallway is vast and has tapestries along the walls showing fire giant battle victories. The group enters and explores the long hallway. Brian backtracks, curious as to what is behind the tapestries. Behind the first tapestry he finds a small room with a fire giant sitting on a stool. The fire giant is unaware of Brian’s invisible presence. Brian attacks the fire giant knocking him off of his bar stool. Nate and Tim join Brian in attacking the fire giant. Further down the hall Jeff spies an ettin on watch. Jeff takes advantage of his invisibility and slays the ettin in one blow.

A second ettin charges at Jeff along with 5 fire giants and 2 hellhounds. The fire giants run past both Jake and dino-dog who are invisible. The hellhounds can sense the invisible Jake and dino-dog, they attack them. Dino-dog and a hellhound go into mono-on-mono, dog-on-dog combat. Jake summons his mystical sabre-tooth tiger. The fire giants easily take it down in one round. The battle is hard, the fire giants are tougher than all the other giants fought so far. When the battle is done the group drags the bodies of the dead fire giants back into the small room where the guard was hiding and decides to press on while they still have the element of surprise.

Tim, Jake, Jeff and Brian throw aside the tapestry that was hiding a large hallway and head down the hall. They meet up with 8 fire giants and slay them. The next room that they enter has the ugliest fire giant queen ever to be seen. She commands them to “Kneel before me you worthless fools”. Nobody kneels and she sends her giant pet weasels to attack the group. After the battle with the queen the group decides to blockade the door with the dead giants’s bodies and rest for a while. After an hour they hear banging at the door demanding to know if the queen is safe. The group removes the dead corpses and opens the door not wanting the patrol to call for more backups.

The group fights the 4 fire giants and 2 hellhounds on patrol and then decide to make a run for it. It's decided that it would be better to rest outside of the fire giant's lair. They fight off 2 more ettin guards patrolling the entrance and then seek out a cave. They find just what they are looking for, a cave whose entrance is 15’ above ground level. Brian lifts everybody up and in and then hops in himself for a good night’s sleep.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff and Brian return to the fire giant's lair. Halfway down the main entranceway is a tapestry blocking the view. Jeff quietly sneaks up to the tapestry and peers behind it. Two ettins and two hellhounds are at the end of the hallway with a large bolt throwing siege weapon. It is loaded with 36 ballista bolts aimed straight down the hallway. Nate uses his dust of disappearance and the group goes invisible and hides in a small alcove. Jeff invisibly sneaks around the tapestry and crawls under the siege weapon. He triggers the weapon and the bolts harmlessly fly down the hallway and strike the large obsidian doors guarding the entrance, missing the intended raiders.

After the battle with the 2 ettins and 2 hellhounds Brian decides to smash the bolt thrower. The noise draws the attention of fire giant guards and some gnolls who are kitchen help. The group kills the guards, moves into the kitchen and finishes off the rest of the fire giants and gnolls. The group continues to search the fire giant's lair and find 4 hellhounds guarding the dead king's bedroom, his personal treasure already taken. They continue to search and discover a room with 8 gnoll advisers. These gnolls are different from all the other gnolls the group has encountered so far. These gnolls are well dressed and highly educated. They are holding a small stone tablet with egyptian hieroglyphics. Tim recognizes the letters from his childhood lessons but he is a bit rusty reading the old egyptian language.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff and Brian continue their interrogation of the gnolls. The gnolls are worshippers of Horus, just as Tim. Causing Tim doubts as to killing them outright. The group finally decides to let the gnolls free with a stern warning that they need to run away and never return. The group then searches the connecting rooms that are full of books, scrolls and a few tablets. The group decides that they will review them later and that they should continue their assault against the fire giants while the fire giants are still unprepared. Before they get the chance to leave Nate is backstabbed by an invisible dwarven thief. The dwarven thief goes invisible again and the group fans out to catch him but the dwarf escapes.

The group finds a hallway that ends with three doors each going in another direction. They open the top door and find themselves staring at a large crown of fire giants and ogres. Jeff panics and activates the Scarab of Cthulhu, bad idea. Jeff resummoms the ugly polymorphic creature of chaos, a sub-shoggoth. It is huge with many mouths and tentacles randomly forming and then retracting back into its body. It is standing next to Jeff and is very interested in finding out if Jeff would be tasty to eat. Brian panics and opens the door to the left and discovers it is full of fire giants. Jake panics and opens the door to the right and is immediately breathed on by 4 hellhounds.

After the sub-shoggoth uses Jeff as a wishbone it swallows Jeff. Having swallowed Jeff it has swallowed the magical device that summoned the sub-shoggoth and is forced to return forthwith to its place of origin or to the nearest convenient parallel dimension, with Jeff still in its belly. Just before Jeff is swallowed, Tim notices a bright golden ring that falls off of Jeff’s finger and rolls right to him. Tim picks it up to consider what to do with it later.

The group fights their way out of the fire giant’s lair and retreats to the cave outside to heal.

Nate, Tim, Jake and Brian return to their secret cave hideout to recover. A green ball of chaos goo forms in the center of the cave and grows. When it reaches 6 feet in diameter Jeff is puked out of the ball, covered in goo but alive.

During the last battle with the fire giants, when Nate used his dust of disappearance he accidently made one of the fire giants invisible. That fire giant kept quiet and followed them to their hideout and then returned to gather an assault team to attack the group in the early morning. The two-headed wizard, Dipole, raised the surrounding rocks to create a rampart up to the cave’s 15’ entrance. Then Dipole sent invisible fire giants into the cave to wait until he threw a fireball spell on the mostly sleeping group. The battle was fierce but eventually the group fended off the assault team. Dipole escaped of course.

After another long rest the group returned to the lair of the fire giants. The entrance hallway was guarded by hellhounds, Type III demons and a chimera. The greeting proved to be too much for the group. Nate, Jake and dino-dog ran away after being affected by a fear spell. Brian, Jeff and Tim were held at bay by a stinky cloud spell and the strength of the demons. The group was forced to retreat into a new hideout cave.

Nate, Tim, Jake and Jeff return to the fire giant’s lair to discover the first level is now unoccupied and any remaining loot taken. The entrance to the second level is a long sloping passage from the 1st level. First they check out a large room that contains about 20 sarcophagi. Finding only looted skeletal remains and giant rat poop. One sarcophagus has a giant animated skeleton that Tim turns to dust using his turn undead talent.

Next they enter a wide hallway that opens up to a room on the east end full of fire giants and ogres. As the combat begins, doors on the north and south side of the hallway open and hill giants and stone giants come out. It’s a TRAP! The group fights and clears out the North room containing the stone giants. They continue to fight the fire giants while inside the stone giant's room with one half of the double doors closed and the other open a crack. A fire giant walks up and closes and secures both doors. The group is trapped in a room that is carved out of solid lava rock and has no exits.

As the group decides what to do next a wizard outside of the room casts a Transmute Rock to Mud spell. The lava rock under the door expands as it turns to mud then is transmuted back into rock, sealing the bottom of the door with 6 inches of rock. Never to be opened again.

Nate, Tim, Jake and Jeff are sealed in the room. Outside the door a silence spell is cast on the door. Fire giant workmen quietly stack cut rocks to block the door. After the entire door and wall is covered with rock then cauldrons of molten lava are carried to the door and poured over the rocks to seal it forever.

Inside the room a strange occurrence happens. Everyone begins to disintegrate just like Star Trek transporters. Jake notices a bright gold ring on Tim’s hand. It is odd because Jake never noticed the easily viewable bright gold ring before. It falls off of Tim’s hand as he teleports away. The ring rolls to Jake’s feet. Jake grabs it just before teleporting himself. Everyone is teleported to the new cave where Brian is waiting for their return.

The group rests up and returns to the fire giant's lair. Upon reaching the second level again they decide to go the other way. First they discover a black smiths workshop next to a large pool of lava and fight a fire giant, trolls, a chimera, and 4 demons levitating over the lava. The demons use telekinesis to lift Nate in the air and float him towards the lava. Tim uses the Dismissal spells to force 3 of the demons back to hell. The 4th demon is slain by Brian’s lightning bolt, Jeff’s arrows and Tim’s spiritual hammer.

The group moves on and finds a hallway full of 20’ purple tentacles and decides to go another route.

A series of jail cells are discovered and the last one has a Titan drugged and trapped. They rescue the Titan and he agrees to help fight the fire giants but he is not so sure about the legal right of Nate the half-orc to live.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, Brian and the Titan continue to explore the jail cells freeing a pair of centaurs, a group of elfs and a human merchant that all agree to come along with the group. Besides, there is no safer place to run to.

The group decides to attack the purple tentacles in the hall. After destroying the tentacles they discover on the other side of the wall are 3 drow. The fight was nasty. The high level drow cleric used flame strike twice. By the end of the fight both Brian and Jake were dead. Jeff rolled a series of natural 20’s with his bow astounding the high AC drow leader who hasn’t been touched in almost 100 years.

The group drags the wounded and dead back to the cave to rest and give Tim time to memorize his new resurrection spell.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, Brian and the Titan return to the fire giant’s lair. Their first encounter is with 5 fire giants and this is the first time the elves and centaurs feel bold enough to help with the fight. A remnant of frost giants are soon also destroyed as well as a pair of cloud giants with their sabre-tooth tiger pets.

A new cave area is discovered and it is full of trolls and gnolls. The fight went late into the night but finally the group finished off all the regenerating trolls.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff and the Titan return to the fire giant’s lair and descend to the 3rd level. This level is cavernous with small tunnels winding around. The first large cavern found has a huge red dragon sleeping. The group decides to go the other way. Quickly the tunnels are too small for the titan to fit through so he stays back and guards the entrance.

The next chamber has 3 ropers that drag Tim, Nate and Jake to their terrible mouths to be chewed on like dog toys. Continuing to explore the group encounters giant fire beetles, a pair of fire lizards then a pack of hellhounds with a fire giant dog trainer

Nate, Tim, Jake, and Jeff continue to explore the caves and encounter a group of fire giants that display expert battle strategy. They even have a drow healer. The group is defeated and runs in retreat and dino-dog is captured by Dipole the two headed wizard. Nate uses the dust of disappearance to turn everyone invisible. They run back to the cave to rest up. Shortly after the group returns to the cave dino-dog runs into the cave with the red gem bloody and torn from his eye socket. Dino-dog’s empty eye socket is all bloody and empty. That night everyone had the same dream of dino-dog. The red gem in his eye socket works as a security camera that Dipole used to track the group's movements. In the dream Nate saw Jake with a bright gold ring on his hand. The ring falls off and rolls over to Nate. Nate picks it up and places it in his finger. In the morning Nate really does have the ring.

The next morning the group returns to the fire giant’s lair. They decide to explore in a new direction. Soon they encounter multiple rooms with many trolls pouring out attacking the group. Nate calls for the centaurs to join the battle.

Nate, Tim, Jake and Jeff continue their fight with the trolls. Brian hears the commotion and runs from the entranceway to the fight. When he arrives he sees the battle and decides to trick the trolls. Since he is also a giant he commands the trolls “Come follow me, the dragon is also under attack.” To everyone's surprise a group of trolls follow him. Brian leads them back to the titan at the entrance and together they kill the trolls. Before the last troll is killed at the entrance Brian heads back to help the rest of the group. Other trolls have heard the fight with Brian and the titan and follow the noise. Brian and the other trolls meet halfway and fight. At the main battle Nate and Jeff are fighting side by side with flaming swords killing trolls. Jake and Tim fend off trolls from another route lower in the cave. After a long and deadly battle the trolls are slain with the only loss of life for the group is one centaur.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, Brian and the Titan decide it is time to take care of the ancient sleeping red dragon. Everyone spreads out and gets in place. As they sneak up Tim accidentally kicks a rock that rolls up to the dragon and bumps into it. To everyone’s surprise the rock rolls through the holographic image of the dragon. Curious Jake pokes his head into the hologram and sees a large bull with metallic scales. It breathes a gaseous grey petrifying cloud on Jake. Jake backs up next to dino-dog, The Grogon leaves the illusionary dragon and breathes again on Jake and this time dino-dog also, both are permanently turned to stone.

Jeff shoots arrows at the gorgon. Brian smashes the gorgon. Nate backs away and is seen by several drow fighters hiding in a nearby cave. Then the real red dragon burst forth through his rock encrusted door. The real ancient red dragon was watching the battle using a clairvoyance spell. First it takes a bite out of Jeff, then it breathes twice on Brian taking him down. Tim heals Brian and together slay the ancient red dragon. Nate and Jeff finish dealing with the drow guards.

The dragon loot was fabulous. Most interestingly was 3 scrolls with a total of 12 wizards spells to be randomly determined. The way we selected a random spell level made the possibility of rolling the 6th level spell 1 out of 6. There are 12 6th level spells 1 out of 12 chance for a Stone to Flesh spell. On any given roll 1/72 chance for a Stone to Flesh spell. Out of 12 rolls 2 needed to be Stone to Flesh spells. A 1.11% chance. Without DM fudging it happened. Jake and dino-dog are no longer stone statues.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, Brian and the Titan decide to hide out in the red dragon’s cave. The drow attempted to set up an ambush for the group. The drow thought that the group had left the caves and were guarding the wrong area. Brian rolled the rock away to exit the red dragon’s chamber. Dipole the two-headed wizard was waiting just outside as backup to the drow. Dipole frantically tossed a fireball into the group. Many of the elves and the centaurs went down. Tim cast a healing circle and that stopped many deaths at that moment. The 9 drow on guards ran over to assist Dipole in the battle. The invisible dwarven thief joined the battle by backstabbing Brian, taking Brian down. Then the drow did the unthinkable evil. An act so evil that no other sentient life form performs it. They start stabbing Brain’s unconscious body, going for a permanent kill. Tim managed to heal Brian enough to keep him from dying. During the battle Dipole and the dwarf thief go invisible again and escape.

After the battle Jake begins to track Dipole and the dwarf. Jake follows the trail down a hallway that ends at a thick yellow cloud. The group decides to go back and explore in a different direction.

The group finds and defeats 10 fire giants and a drow cleric that heals the fire giants during the fight.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, Brian and the Titan decide to explore the yellow cloud. It stinks of sulfuric acid and burns exposed skin and lungs. Brian is the first to explore the opaque gas. He blindly bumps into several walls before finding an opening. Brian is greeted by drow patrol guards. The guards hedge Brian in and keep the others from joining the battle because they would have to stand in the burning yellow cloud. Brain makes headway, Nate and Jeff join the fight. A drow wizard shoots Brian with a wand of magic missiles several times until Brian returns the favor with his lightning bolt, frying the drow wizard. After the battle a mysterious map is discovered.

After recovering from the yellow acid cloud and the drow fight, the group continues to explore the cave. The next cavern has more drow in it. As the group charges forward they discover that the ground is covered with steel marbles forcing Brian and Nate to slip and fall. The battle continues with Tim using flame strike and healing spells. Then a drow cleric casts a silence spell stopping Tim from casting spells and healing the group. The passageways leading to this cavern are too small to allow the Titan to assist. When the battle was over the group looted the drow’s better equipment to help them with their own armor class and also for their minion’s armor class.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, Brian and the Titan backtrack through the yellow cloud to find a resting place. They are certain they have come near the end of the Fire Giants lower cavern. The next morning they push on with Jeff sneaking ahead scouting. Jeff goes quiet and missing for too long. Brian moves up to see what is happening. Jeff attacks Brian with a backstab and misses. Jeff walked into a lair of 3 mind flayers and one of them has taken control of Jeff. The other two mind flayers step out of the shadows and mind blasts the group. After one mind flayer is killed the other two retreat to the astral plane to report the incident.

Another drow patrol is defeated that guards a rope bridge crossing a flowing lake of lava. The group begins to walk across the rope bridge and are attacked by charging drow from the other side. Brian clears the way of drow and the others cross the bridge with Jeff staying on the original side shooting arrows. A drow cleric cast sound burst hoping to knock people off the bridge into the lava but everyone holds tight. As the group fights and Jeff is alone on the other side of the bridge two fire salamanders crawl out of the lava and attack Jeff. Nate’s NPC centaurs and elf archers assist Jeff in killing the fire salamanders.

After the battle the group discovers a store run by drow at the entrance of the descent to The Underdark, the Vault of the Drow.

The Titan decided to be the last one to cross the rope bridge. As he is halfway across the bridge the invisible dwarven thief reappears and backstabs the Titan. Dipole the two-headed wizard also appears and zaps the Titan with a lightning bolt. The Titan falls over and into the flowing lava. Dipole is flying 30 feet in the air and has a Protection from Missiles spell on. Brian blocks the group's side of the rope bridge in case the dwarf should try to cross. Arrows fly at Dipole only to swerve aside at the last moment because of his protection spell. Dipole casts a circular ring of fire around everyone. Jake alone was outside of the ring of fire and standing on the ground near the flying wizard. The wall of fire blocks line of sight and is slowly roasting everyone inside. Jeff uses the crank arm to start lowering the rope bridge to get access under the wall of fire. Jake notices that there is a stalactite hanging over Dipole and shoots the stalactite that crashes down on Dipole forcing him to the ground where he is pinned under the stalactite. Dipole uses a Teleport spell to teleport from under the stalactite and down the hallway. From there Dipole tries to entice Jake to chase him but Jake doesn’t take the bait. Dipole casts a final lightning bolt at Jake and runs deep down into the cave, the entrance to the famous Descent.

Jeff lowers the bridge enough to get under the wall of fire and gets stabbed by the waiting and again invisible dwarf. Brian grabs the semi-floating Titan from the lava but only drags a partial and un-resurrectable corpse out. Jeff falls into the lava and Brian pulls out the freshly killed Jeff out of the lava with his body still intact. Next Brain goes toe-to-toe with the dwarf and sends the dwarf flying into the lava to his death.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian follow the cave into the deep. The cave is clear of debris and has been matted down by ages of footsteps. The tunnel is on average 30 feet wide and varies between 20-50 feet in height. The group walks for miles and near the end of the day they hear a Drow voice calling out from the dark ahead. “Halt and announce which great house you are a guest of!”. With some quick thinking Jake says “Ra” and the group is suspiciously allowed to pass with their “slaves” despite the clear allegiance Tim has to house Horus.On the second day of travel the group’s path is blocked by a broken bridge spanning a 100 foot cleft in the tunnel. Jeff throws a grappling hook across and manages to climb across securing a second rope on the way. As others cross more ropes are secured and eventually enough ropes for the two centaurs to cross.

On the third day the cave tunnel starts to rumble and a giant purple worm breaks into the tunnel trying to swallow members of the group. After the battle the group moves down a smaller secondary passage that is only 20 feet wide and 15- 50 feet in height. Angry voices are heard from up ahead. Nate used his dust of disappearance to turn the group invisible and Jeff scouts ahead. He finds 6 Drow with about 30 slaves of various humanoid races. The group attacks the Drow and Nat uses his Ancestral Calling ability to rally the slaves and help in the fight against the Drow overlords. 3 Drow escape and run for their lives deeper down into the infamous Descent.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian use a new map that they discovered from the Drow slavers. Brian thinks he has discovered their location on the map and decides to take a route that will take them uphill to confirm their location. Upon coming to an area marked on the map as a warning the group discovers mind flayers and gnolls. Tim casted a blade barrier on the mind flayers forcing them to retreat to the astral plane as the rest of the group kills the gnoll servants.

A mysterious black chest is found. A simple nudge makes the chest glide across the floor until it hits a wall. Jeff opens the chest and sees the inside is full of flowing white vapors trapped inside. Jeff places his hands on the handles of the chest and has a strange urge to place his head in the chest. After Jeff places his head in the chest he has a strange urge to place his arms in the chest and dig deeper down. Brian pulls him out and closes the chest. The chest is placed in a bag and stored on their pack lizard.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian follow the new map deeper into the Descent. They find an opening into a large chamber that has all the smells and sounds of a village. Carefully they explore. Following the left hand wall that leads them to a room full of crystals embedded in the walls. Spikes pop up and down out of the ground when Jake enters the room. Avoiding the crystal room the next chamber has many gargoyles perched on 70’ high ledges. The gargoyles patiently wait until the group has fully committed to entering the room and then they swoop down to attack. Dino-dog is seriously hurt and carried away by a pair of gargoyles back to the ledge to be eaten. Brian lifts both Jake and Tim 30’ into the air just under the ledge. Jake starts to climb and Tim casts a wind walk and walks the rest of the way up to rescue dino-dog.

After the battle the group decides to change things up and start searching the right side of the cave only to discover a large group of cave trolls.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian formed a battle line to fight against the horde of trolls. The elves formed a second line and shot arrows. Tim burned trolls to the ground using a flame strike. Then a group of trolls ran further back into the cave to sweep around to the rear of the group’s battle lines. As the trolls appeared behind the line and started toward the line of elf archers, Tim struck again with a flame strike and then he placed a blade barrier that forced the trolls to run around the wall costing them several rounds. By the end of the night the group had killed 50 trolls.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian push further into the caves and find a hive of troglodytes in narrow tunnels. As they the group moves through the maze slaying the frog-like humanoids they become scattered about. Jeff and Nate find themselves alone in a large chamber and a pair of sphinx's fly in and attack. Jake, Tim and Brian run to their aid. Then a pair of giant wyverns join the battle poisoning Brian, Tim and Jake. Tim’s Delay Poison spell worked very well in that battle. After the monsters have been dealt with the group decides to return to the gargoyle cave and rest up on the 70’ tall ledges.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian are attacked in the middle of the night as they rest up on the 70’ tall ledges in the gargoyle room. Jake and Tim are awakened by a pair of disembodied floating hands 10’ x 30’ in size. They have been grabbed and are being squeezed. Each of them held mid-air by a hand. Jake, screams and Jeff is the first to wake up. He sees Jake and Tim caught in the air. Jeff also sees Di-pole the two headed wizard holding a pair of sticks with small floating hands at the tip of each stick. Di-pole is controlling the floating hands. Protecting Di-pole are three type III demons. As the rest of the group wakes up everyone but Brian and the two centaurs are stuck on the 70’ ledges. Brian charges the demons.

Jeff remembers he has a Summon Greater Monster spell written on a scroll. He deciphers it and summons a giant purple worm that tunnels up through the ground right behind Di-pole. Di-pole panics and the magical hand spell is broken. Jake and Tim are dropped. Di-pole creates a magical protective bubble around himself. Jeff rolls for the purple worm’s attack, a natural 20! Di-pole is swallowed whole. During the battle two of the demons changed shape to match dino-dog’s form and teleported next to dino-dog. All three dino-dogs circle around each other angrily hissing. Jake cannot tell which is the real dino-dog. They all follow his commands. Brian, a storm giant paladin, walks up to the 3 dino-dogs and uses his protection from evil forcing the two demons in dino-dog’s form to retreat. Once discovered they melt into a bubbling pool of green goo and retreat back to their plane of origin.

Finally the group gets to finish their night of rest. In the morning they head out back to the maze of small passages where the troglodytes live. Jake spots a small group of trogs and charges them. The trogs run away hoping to draw the group further in and so trolls can spring a trap. Jake senses the danger and discovers the trolls hiding. Soon a battle with the trolls and troglodytes begins. During the battle Tim cast a couple of flame strikes against the trolls and then a sound burst spell against the trogs. The super loud noise is heard everywhere in the cave and the local ceiling of the cave shakes and drops small debris. Tim casts a second sound burst spell and a small area of the ceiling drops in causing a large dust cloud that cannot be seen through. The few troglodytes that are left run in retreat.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian wait for the dust to clear and continue to search the maze of tunnels. Jake wanders into a weird lichen forest and discovers that it is not safe and leaves it to join the others. The group moves back to the large cavern area and sees that a large band of troglodytes are watching them and blocking the entrance to a different set of small cave tunnels. The group searches more of the large cavern and discover that a 60’ cube of darkness is moving there way. They panic and back off and launch an attack on the troglodytes. Swiftly trolls and more trogs run out of the weird lichen forest to assist the troglodytes.

The group has changed form the attackers to the defenders. They back-off and form a defensive line. The 60’ cube moves closer and crossbow bolts fly out at Brian. Tim cast a daylight spell and dispel the magical dark cube and 12 drow are inside levitated 30’ in the air all armed with crossbows. The trolls press hard against Jake and Dino-dog. The drow renew their darkness spell and continue to shoot their crossbows. Then the giant sphinx returns and attacks Brian. The outcome of this battle was looking very bad for our heroes. Until, Tim cast a blade barrier spell securing the defensive line. Shortly after Tim’s blade barrier spell a second band of trolls attack from the rear not knowing that the frontal assault has collapsed. Most of the troglodytes, front line trolls, and drow back-off and leave the battle not wanting to be close to the blade barrier.

The night ends with the group victorious, well at least alive, and headed back out of the area, down the main tunnel half a mile to rest up again.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian return to the large cavern. The troglodytes are still there guarding their territory. The group moves closer to the drow side of the cavern and two groups of cubicle darkness move toward them both with levitated drow shooting crossbow bolts, mostly at Brain the storm giant. Tim casts True Sight and sees the two groups of drow. A group of 8 and a group of 6. Tim flame strikes the group of 8 twice, killing them all and exposing 4 drow leaders sneaking up from behind the darkness cube. At this moment Jake attacks the troglodytes thinking they might help the drow.

Nate, Jake, the centaurs and the elven archers become overrun by troglodytes. They back up from the troglodytes who do not pursue further. As Jake approaches the drow who are cloaked in darkness, his golden sword shines through the darkness and the 6 levitating drow are seen. Tim casts Wind Walk on Brian and he walks up in the air to the drow and cuts them down. It looks like the drow have finally been defeated.

Nate, Tim, Jake and Jeff continue to search the area where the drow lived. Jake finds an abandoned hall that is mysteriously dark. Jake moves into the darkness with Nate and Tim following.The darkness is suddenly peeled away and a booming voice demands “WHO HAS DISTURBED MY SLUMBER!”. Laying on a low shelf is a skeletal creature dressed in expensive but deteriorated clothing. A lich! Jake, Nate, Tim and dini-dog fall up and hit the 120’ ceiling, caught in the effect of a Reverse Gravity spell. Tim and dino-dog are unconscious. Next the lich cast a barrage of 12 magic missiles at Nate. Nate cannot survive another round of damage. Jeff is still outside of the room and has witnessed all this. Jeff pulls out a scroll and casts Cloudkill. The deadly fog rolls out towards the lich but also is under the effect of the reverse gravity spell, so it starts to ascend to the ceiling where it will kill everyone up on the ceiling.

Nate pulls out his golden ring of wishes that so many people for so long has used and kept it a secret. Nate loudly shouts “I wish we never came in this room” The entity that inhabits the ring screams out in pain, Nate’s mind is filled with visions of hundreds of years of past owners of the ring making wishes. The ring disintegrates and the entity is released. Granting Nate his final wish.

Nate, Tim, Jake and Jeff look into an abandoned hall and decide not to enter, something from down the hallway does not seem right. Inside, in the darkness, a genie and a lich battle it out.

The group walks further into the cave and are ambushed by an elf on the shelf attack. Drow on 80ft’ shelves are shooting crossbows down on the group. Tim uses a Blade Barrier spell and kills 7 drow. Jeff casts a wall of stone from a scroll and entombs 5 drow. Then from the left gobraotors attack. The group backs up from the drow leaving behind dino-dog’s corpse. A large pack of ghouls sensing the fresh kill come from the right to claim dino-dog’s corpse. Nate sends a pair of elves to retrieve dino-dog’s corpse before the ghouls carry it away. Tim uses his turn undead ability round after round repelling the ghouls. The gobraptors are eventually defeated. It’s time for the group to leave the area and rest up again.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian restup for two days. Tim restores dino-dog back to life. It’s time to return to the cavern one last time. The cavern has been transformed by the lich into a weird space walk. 5’ paths web throughout the cavern and underneath nothing but space and starts. Jakes tosses a rock over the edge and it swiftly floats down and to the right. Not as fast as real falling but fast enough. Off in the distance a translucent neon glowing whale is seen swimming about.

They search the new paths and are attacked by a pair of flying sphinx that unsuccessfully knock Jake off the path.

Then the group comes to a nexus and floating in the middle is the genie trapped in a large floating lamp. Nate feels sorry because he was the one that forced the lich and the genie into battle. Obviously the genie lost. Nates ties a rope around his waist and Brian tosses him to the large floating lamp. Nate catches the lamp handle and pulls himself up. The lid is 400 pounds and does not want to budge. To everyone's horror the lich returns, floating through space. Tim uses turn undead on the lich but to no avail. Brian uses his lightning bolt on the lich. Jeff shoots arrows only to have them swerve aside due to a Protection from Missiles spell. The lich was amused enough to shoot Brian with a 45 point damage magic missile.

Nate, not wanting to be knocked off the lamp, ties himself to the lid and performs a heroic feat of strength and slides the lid off the lamp. Nate and the lamp lid are now falling into endless and empty space. Brian charges the lich, the lich casts a Prismatic Sphere spell that creates a protective sphere around him. Tim casts a Wind Walk spell that allows him to fly down and retrieve Nate. The genie and the lich both inside the prismatic sphere are fighting again. With the lich distracted, the group decides to run away.

The group runs down a new halfway, an exit that leads to the other side of the large cavern. Between them and the exit is a large floating space slug. Really big, 40 feet tall and wide and 80 feet long. Nate runs up and attacks, the slug runs Nate over secreting acid on Nate as the slug slowly moves over him. Brian hides in a side passage. Jeff uses rope and ties himself to the astral path and dangles underneath. When the slug runs over the rope it dissolves the rope and Jeff falls into the emptiness of space. Tim, still under the effect of his wind walk spell, flies down to retrieve Jeff. As the giant slug finishes running over Nate, Nate climbs on the back of the slug and starts stabbing it in the back. Brian walks behind the slug stabbing it. Eventually the slug dies and turns into a sparkly blue dust and floats away into space.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian continue walking down the main cave tunnel for a day and a half. Then they hear the loud roar of running water. It’s a 40 foot wide river with a strong current. On the far side of the river is a kuo-toa with a barge. The barge is big enough to hold 6 normal sized people. After the group had a long debate about what to do Tim cast Wind Walk on a centaur. Jake calls for the ferryman to come over and take him across. The centaur flies over the river with Tim on its back, just like one of Santa’s reindeer. Jake, dino-dog, Nate, and two elves get on the barge with the ferryman and start to cross the river. Agitated by all the noise, giant ants crawl out from the ground on both sides of the river. These ants are 3’ tall and 8’ long. Tim casts a Blade Barrier spell to block off the cave hallway on the far side of the river. The ferryman panics and stops crossing. On the original side the ants attack Brian. Jake tries to intimidate the ferryman into continuing with the river crossing. The ferryman does not take kindly to this and grabs the single oar and dives into the water and swims away. With some great arrow shots from Jeff, the ants on the original side are slain and the rest of the group crosses the river. Tim throws a rope to the elves on the barge and they are safely towed to shore.

After 3 more days of walking the group comes to a new and very alien looking area. It is large and as quiet as a monastery. There are glowing greenish phosphorescent lichens and glowing grayish slugs as large as a man's fist which crawl everywhere (walls, ceilings, floors) giving the area an undersea appearance, and a strange salt tang is in the air to enhance this impression. In the center of a large room is a 20’ dark green nude female statue with a giant lobster-head and hands. The walls and pavement of this place are very worn and old. It feels alien and foreboding.

Brian walks up to the 20’ tall status. It's just as tall as he is. He pulls out one of his fire giant hammers and takes a mighty swing at the head. As the hammer reaches within 6 inches of the statue’s head, Brian disappears.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff mourn the loss of Brian. Tim casts a locate object spell on Brian’s battle axe and cannot locate it. This means Brian is on a different plane. Tim is considering desperate means when all of a sudden Brian’s body appears in mid air and sloshes down to the ground in a bubble of water and small fish. Brian is dead. Tim resurrects Brian and Brian tells the tale of how he was transported to the elemental plane of water. Not being able to breathe underwater he died.

Everyone decides that leaving the statue alone is a good idea. They don’t even want to touch the altars. Instead they explore a hallway. All is silent until they come across a solitary kuo-toa. Brian charges the kuo-toa only to discover that it is a kung fu fighting monk. Other kuo-toas come to assist the monk. The monk smacks Brian so badly he is knocked out, almost to die again. Several groups of kuo-toas join hands and start chanting. Soon lightning bolts shoot out from them and hit several members of the group.

After the fight the group pushes forward and fights another large group of kuo-toas with another monk. By the end they are exhausted but continue to move on.

Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian continue exploring and find another large group of kuo-toas with two monks. Jeff shoots arrows at the monks but they catch the arrows in mid-air and snap the arrows in half as if they were insulted. The fight continues with a second wave of kuo-toa attacking, more lighting casting kuo-toas and even worse the captain of the guards comes out. The kuo-toa caption taunts Brian to come forward and challenge him. The kuo-toa caption stabs Brian several times with a blade of wounding. These wounds do not heal and Brian starts to bleed out swiftly and the kuo-toa captain retreats to let Brian die.

Bleeding Brian is going to die very soon and the rest of the group is being beaten back by the kuo-toa and the lightning bolts. Jeff uses his scroll again and casts a gaseous form spell on Brian. Brian’s body becomes an eatherel cloud and stops bleeding, keeping Brian alive, next Jeff casts the cloudkill spell that slowly moves towards the kuo-toa, securing the group's escape.

Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian return to the kuo-toa temple and continue to explore. First they encounter another monk and a large group of kuo-toa. In the heat of the battle a kuo-toa opens a door right behind Tim and grabs Tim with a man-catcher preventing him from casting spells. The group moves further down the hallway battling kuo-toas and encounters another monk and more kuo-toa. As the battle rages on, 3 kuo-toa join hands and start to chant to cast lightning bolts. Twice Tim used his sound burst spell to disrupt them. Then from behind new creatures arrive. 3 dipole worm spawns, somehow the wizard Dipole has gene spliced and cloned new creatures. The top half is his torso with both heads one human, one elfen. The lower body is that of a purple worm with a poisonous tail. Kuo-toas move through a door and attack the group from the rear as the dipole worm spawns cast magic missiles from behind the kuo-toas. Jeff uses another magic scroll and casts a stinking cloud spell on the kuo-toa in the rear blocking the line of sight for the dipole worm spawns forcing them to stop casting magic missiles.

Tim uses his spiritual hammer to kill the kuo-toa holding him with the man-catcher, Tim moves further ahead and opens a door to find a small group of kuo-toa. He casted another sound burst spell. Soon a conch shell alarm is heard throughout the entire temple. A massive number of kuo-toa answer the alarm. The group makes a run for it, Tim casts a blade barrier spell to block the route of retreat allowing the group to escape and not be pursued.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff and Brian return to the temple of the kuo-toa. While they are still a tenth of a mile away they hear a large crowd of kuo-toa chanting. Getting closer Nate uses his dust of disappearance on Jeff and Jeff sneaks forward to scope out the situation. Jeff sees 500 kuo-toa surrounding their god statue all chanting, plus 8 kung-fu monks. Two in each corner of the large sanctuary. The group works on a plan of attack for an hour and a half, the plan of attack has been formed.

Jeff moves forward still invisible and fires off the wand of wonder. A lightning bolt randomly appears in the midst of the kuo-toa and strikes 8 of them dead. Unfortunately that was the last charge on the wand of wonder and it crumbled into dust. Next Jeff uses a scroll to cast a Cloudkill spell. He misreads the scroll and the spell on the scroll vanishes without being cast. The tempo of the kuo-toa chanting has gotten angry and large dark storm clouds form inside the sanctuary. A giant lightning bolt shoots from the statue into the clouds and then down towards the group. It misses the group evaporating a 20 foot area of stone. The group decides that a new plan needs to be made. They run.

The group runs down the hallway to the right and then takes a left to run past the sanctuary. Giant lightning bolts are heard from inside the sanctuary, always tracking them and striking in their direction. Just past the sanctuary the group runs into a dozen warrior kuo-toa and two monks. They are still too close to the sanctuary and the lightning strikes to stay and fight. Tim casts a blade barrier to block off most of the kuo-toa allowing the group to swiftly defeat the few kuo-toa on Tim’s side of the blade barrier. The group then escapes to the far side of the temple and out to the caves, ready to continue their march to the vault of the drow.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian continue traveling from the kuo-toa temple for a day and a half when they enter a cave that looks out of place. It is a beautiful outdoor grotto with a pool of water, trees, a starry night sky and full of small yellow birds, squirrels and chipmunks. Brain tests the water to discover that he does not get wet when he touches it. In the center of the pool is a human sized trapdoor. Jeff checks the trapdoor for traps. It is clearly not trapped and is used frequently. Just as Jeff goes to open the trapdoor the illusion flickers from beauty light to scarry midnight. The small yellow birds are bats, the squirrels and chipmunks are rats. A pair of drow vampires, male and female, appear and try to charm Nate and Tim. Tim suddenly feels that the two drow vampires must be friendly and starts to walk over to them to greet them in a friendly manner. Brian is suspicious and follows Tim. Suddenly Tim, Brian, and the two drow vampires are hidden in a darkness spell. Brian reaches out to grab Tim but accidentally pushes Tim away and down to the ground. Jake moves into the darkness using his golden sword that removes the darkness. Once the darkness is removed Tim is seen having a threeway, not the good kind, with the vampires. Both vampires having fed turn themselves into bats and anonymously join the other 100 bats flying about. Jeff continues his search of the trapdoor and discovers a room with treasure, books, and magical scrolls.

The group travels for most of the rest of the day and encounters giant black widow spiders. After the battle an odd gold statue is found. It’s clearly evil but very valuable. The statue is shaped like a creature that has the body of a spider and a female head with two human arms. Jeff scoops the statue into a chest without touching the statue so the group can decide what to do with it later.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian arrive at a walled drow outpost. From the dark a drow shouts “Identify yourself and state your business.” Tim casts a True Sight spell and sees into the darkness at the 25’ wall manned by drow. They devise a plan to rush the wall. Before they make it to the wall a drow wizard shoots Tim with a Viscous Glob Spell. Both of Tim’s arms are superglued to his sides. The group quickly retreats and spends all afternoon trying to release Tim from the glue. Eventually they decide to burn it off. It was a painful solution but it worked.

The group devises a new plan. Brian, Nate and Jake will sneak up invisibly while holding a stone that Tim has cast a silence spell on. Brian lifts Nate and Jake up onto the wall. The plan is to open the gates from the inside. Nate starts off the fight on the wall by knocking a drow guard off the wall and using his intimidation skill to instill fear in the other drow. Jake joins the fight on top of the wall and Brian still invisible, climbs over the wall to open the gates.

To Brian’s dismay there are no levers, handles or even a traditional bar over the door. The doors just won’t open. Tim uses Wind Walk to fly over the wall and sees the drow wizard also flying in the air. Tim uses Flame Strike on the wizard and kills him. The drow wizard literally went down in flames, crashed and burned.

During the battle a few guards ran off further down the cave. The group waited but no one returned. After an hour they decided to forge ahead. The cave’s atmosphere changed as they got further from the drow keep. The cave was more civilized, more voices were heard down minor tunnel offshoots. They even passed a small group of drow merchants that gave the group a casual glance at them and stepped aside to let them pass as if this was normal.

By the end of the day the group entered the famed vault of the drow. The cave passage opens up to an entire underground world. You can see clearly for 240 yards and dimly out to 480 yards. You are standing in a gorge that slowly descends. The gorge is about 200 yards wide and gradually opening to the north along the roadway. On both sides steep walls rise up to 150' and as the path descends these cliffs grow proportionately taller. Here and there along these bluffs are small cracks and caves. Lichens and fungi grow everywhere and glow in various aquamarine shades and rose colors.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian stand at the entrance of the Vault of the Drow wondering what to do next. They carefully walk through the chasm for ½ a mile and then it opens up to an entire drow kingdom. Up ahead a road goes up a hill and to a tall black tower and a group of human traders can be seen walking towards the tower. At first the group decides to walk around the tower but a drow patrolman from on top of the hill calls to them and tells them to come in and get their foreigner's cloaks. As the group approaches the tower the group of human merchants are seen leaving all wearing similar brown cloaks

Once they are at the tower they are told that they need to wear the brown foreigner cloaks at all times. Anyone failing to wear the cloaks are assumed to be escaped slaves and will be hunted down for sport. The patrolmen do not have cloaks large enough for Brian and the two centaurs so a messenger runs off to spread the word of the extra large foreign traders to the city. From the tower the group travels to the foreign quarters where their goods are placed in crates and stamped to be allowed for sale in the city.

The other groups of traders in the foreign quarters are: Ogre mage (3) with ogres (15) - magical components Lizardmen (20) - exotix foods Hobgoblins (5) and goblins (100) - slaves Human (20) - slaves and ale Orcs (50) - slaves Gobraptors (10) - slaves Gobraptors (15) - gems Gobraptors (10) - slaves Gobraptors (30) - precious metals Dwarves (20) - hammers and other tools

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian decide to explore the kingdom before going to the city. They discover a large walled off section for female drow fighters, guild house Bast with giant feline looking spiders, and guild house Ra where mysteriously everyone who looks over the castle wall has the same face as one of the group. At every place they are treated with open hostility.

The group tries to pick a fight with an orc trader while at the foreigners quarter. The head orc trader slaps the orc who was taking the bait in the back of the head and tells him to leave. The head orc trader warned the group that the drow only tolerate foreigners and if the foreigners, meaning them, cause any ruckuss, the drow will sweep in and kill them all.

The next morning the group heads to the city Erelhei-Cinlu. Finding the main market square they spend the day selling all the loot they have accumulated for many months. Unfortunately the market square has nothing of value for them to buy. They ask around looking for powerful magical items to buy but find nothing. After a while a small teen aged drow boy tells them he can take them to the special shop they are looking for, for a fee, As soon as the group pays the fee other teens join the walk with the group through narrow alleyways, empty buildings and very questionable shops and parlors. After almost an hour of walking through this urban maze they stop at the famous JJ’s Emporium. Unfortunately during the walk the other teens pocketed the group for about 2,000 gold pieces in coins. At JJ’s Emporium the group find more powerful magic equipment that they are looking for.

After they come out of the shop the kid is alone and tells them that they are his best customer and his boss would like to meet them. They follow the kid deeper into the city to an abandoned warehouse to meet the boss. The boss offers them a job. Steal the cloak from the high priestess of guild house Bast while it is on the laundry line drying.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian decide to do the job of stealing the cloak from the high priestess of guild house Bast. The first morning they watch while hiding in the fungi forest and only normal looking clothing comes out to dry. The second day a spectacular looking cloak is hung to dry. It is silvery and sparkly and looks like it is made out of hardened spider webs. Jeff invisibly sneaks up to the clothes line while also in an ethereal flying form from a Wind Walk spell. He rematerializes, grabs the cloak while invisible and then turns back into a gaseous form and flys away with the cloak.

The group heads back to the city and in the market square the kid finds them and takes them back into the inner city to a different warehouse to meet the boss again. The boss congratulates the group on stealing the cloak and tells them that as a reward they can keep it. After a few more minutes of conversation the boss is anxious to leave and tells the kid to show the guest out. The group feels that something is wrong and stashes the stolen cloak in an empty crate as they leave. On their way back to the foreigners quarters they hear a magically amplified voice scream “THIEVES! My cloak has been stolen. Call for my priestess to use a Find Object spell to track the thieves down.” An hour later while the group is still walking back to the foreigner quarter a large and angry group of drow run past the group heading towards the city.

The next morning the kid shows up to the foreigners quarters and passes along a message. The boss was impressed that the group was smart enough to ditch the cloak. He is now willing to help them The boss supplies the group a map of the upper city where the drow royalty lives and gains access to the great temple of Lolth. Early the next morning Tim casts a Wind Walking spell on the group and they all fly over the city, over the upper city and down the tunnel to the large pagoda shaped temple of Lolth.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian enter the pagoda shaped temple of Lolth. The temple is richly decorated with designs of spiders, demons and spider webs. They enter the empty foyer and search several empty meeting rooms. Moving further into the center of the building they find what appears to be The Demon Queen Lolth, 30 feet tall and floating in a radiant column of orange light guarding a wall that looks like the night sky. Jeff shoots a few arrows that pass through the illusion and enter the night sky wall as if it was not solid.

The group decides to explore a large curved staircase heading underground and fight off several giant black widow spiders and drow guards. In the basement from a dark opening a giant sized spider web shoots out, capturing Brian and easily dragging him, Brain a 24’ tall storm giant. This is the real Lolth. The fight was brief and Lolth swiftly found herself in need of turning herself into a gaseous form and escaping upstairs through the night sky wall.

The group follows into the night sky wall.

They enter Lolth’s Demonweb. All pathways of the Web are 20' wide and appear to be made of some type of polished stone. Close examination will reveal, however, that there is a slight movement in it. If characters study it further, this movement will resolve itself into the bodies and faces of distorted humans; these are the lost souls of the Abyss, trapped in this material as their punishment. There are no walls or ceilings around the pathways; instead, there is a billowing, grayish, repulsive-smelling fog. This fog stays at the edge of the pathways and forms a ceiling 10' above, making a corridor of sorts. If explored with some caution, characters reaching into the fog will discover that there is nothing beyond the mist, in any direction, to see or touch. Furthermore, due to the billowing fog, vision is reduced to a maximum of 60' and a minimum of 10', varying with the changes in the fog. Neither infravision nor ultravision can penetrate the fog. Anyone reaching over the edge of the path will discover that the pathway itself is only three inches thick. All pathways are separated by 40', no matter what level the characters are on nor what level the underpass or overpass is.

One of the unusual properties of the Web is that no matter how many times a pathway is crossed, or crosses over itself or another path, it always remains completely level. There are no ramps, slopes, stairs, or inclines anywhere on the Web. Impossible on the Prime Material Plane, it exists here simply because Lolth wills it. Lolth has also placed a permanent feather fall on the underpasses and overpasses of the Web. When characters step off the path, one of two things will happen: if there is a pathway under the characters, they will float gently down to it; if not, they will be swept away in the howling winds of the Abyss, to be forever lost

Nate, Tim, Jake, and Brian explore Lolth’s Demonweb. They find a door that leads to nowhere. Nate opens the door and two trolls grab him and toss him inside the room to be attacked by the other trolls in the room. Tim opens the door and the rest of the party enters the room to fight the trolls. After the trolls are defeated they continue to explore and find another door.

Nate, not wanting to repeat his misfortune, opens the doors and gives his scariest battle cry! The room is an empty 10 x 10 room. Upon further inspection a secret food is found and another room that has 5 pretty female models behind bars and an old cleric guarding what he calls, the dangerous creatures. After talking with the old cleric it is clear he is not right in the head and a fight breaks out. The cleric flame strikes the group a couple of times before being killed.

Using a key found on the dead cleric the group releases the girls. They instantly transform into huge frog demons and attack the group.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian continue to wander Lolth’s Demonweb looking for more mysterious doors. Jeff opens the next door to discover 66 gnoll and 3 minotaurs guards in a large room. The adventurers move in and form a defensive wall waiting for the gnolls to charge. Instead the gnolls form their own defensive walls and throw javelins at the group. The group staying in formation moves up to the gnolls and battles it out hand-to-hand, eventually killing all the gnolls and minotaurs.

The next door is dark and full of dried bones and broken pieces of armor and weapons. The group enters to search the room with Jake leading the way with his gold sword brightly shining. Suddenly Jake is airborne and a vulture headed creature with bird claws is seen on a ledge 90’ in the air telepathically lifting Jake into the air. Jake is lifted 100 feet and then thrown down to the ground. Soon Jake, Tim and Dino-dog are all being lifted into the air and thrown to the ground. There are 4 of these creatures on 4 ledges. The group shoots arrows and Brian throws fire giant hammers and the creatures are eventually slain.

After the battle is over a doorway at the end of the room turns from a misty opening to an exit that leads to a different colored pathway, the second level of Lolth’s Demonweb. Unfortunately Dino-dog died after being thrown to the ground a second time. Tim uses his raised dead spell on Dino-dog and as dino-dog’s body writhes around being made whole again a second head grows out of his body, a vulture head, like the one of the creatures that inhabited the room.

Nate, Tim, Jake, and Jeff continue to wander Lolth’s Demonweb looking for more mysterious doors. The next intradimensional room has 4 doors and a bright shiny mirror. Jake enters and the mirror turns out to be a super magnet. Jake and Jeff get dragged into the room. Jeff manages to stop himself and exits the room. Jake is wearing more metal and is dragged all the way to the magnet and gets stuck on it. After Jake is stuck the 4 doors open and bugbears with wooden mallets rush out and start hammering Jake. Nate ties a rope around his waist and has a centaur hold the other end of the rope so he can enter the room and fight without being dragged to the magnet. Tim stays in the hallway and removes all his armor and metal weapons then enters the room. Tim grabs a wooden mallet from a dead bugbear and uses it as a weapon. After the bugbears are killed with the group help’s Jake is freed from the super magnet.

The next room is large and dark. Jake leads the way with his glowing gold sword. Out from the darkness a fireball comes out and explodes in the middle of the group. Jake and Nate move further into the darkness and discover 4 drow clerics and a drow wizard. Nate succumbs to a hold person spell and cannot fight. Jake gets slammed by the cleric's spiritual hammer spell. Jeff uses a scroll and summons a nycadaemon and sends it out to attack the wizard. Jake fights the 4 clerics and is brutally hammered. Then another fireball is released and kills Jake. The next round a cleric animates Jake’s body into a zombie and has it attack the group. In a panic Tim uses a raise dead spell on Jake’s zombie body and restores him to life. During Jake's transformation from zombie to living human a set of large demonic looking bat wings grow out of his back.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian continue to wander Lolth’s Demonweb looking for more mysterious doors. Brian opens the next door and stares into a mirror on the far wall. Out of the mirror a duplicate of Brian steps through the mirror and attacks Brian. Brian throws a hammer at the mirror hoping to smash it but he misses. A group of ogres join the fight assisting Brian’s duplicate. During the battle both Brain and the duplicate use the paladin's power of smite evil/good, complete heal and a complete heal potion. During the fight Brian uses his lightning bolt on his duplicate. Unfortunately Brian forgot he is immune to lightning. With the assistance of the orges the real Brian nearly dies a couple of times. With the assistance of the rest of the group eventually the duplicate Brian is killed and then the ogres are finished off.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian enter a large dark room filled with black water. There is a bridge from the door to a small island in the middle of the room. On the island are a pair of frog demons preparing to summon more demons. The group rushes in to fight the 2 demons on the island and 4 more demons levitate out from the water far away from the island. The frog demons cast a fear spell and Jake, Dino-dog, and Nate freeze in fear. Tim uses his remove fear spell on each person so they can regain control of themselves. The 4 other demons levitating in the water summon more demons to fight. Eventually Jeff and the elf archers are able to kill the demon summers in the water, while the rest of the group kills the summoned demons.

After the battle has finished an opening appears in the middle of the island with a ladder that leads the group to the 3rd level of Lolth’s Demonweb.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian enter another room that has two Nycadaemons and two Mezzodaemons each protecting a dipole worm each in a corner of the room. The Nycadaemons use a repulsion spell to hold back the group from approaching while the dipole worms cast magic missiles. Twice Brian fails to enter the room because of the repulsion spell, twice Tim fails to enter the room because of the repulsion spell, Nate only fails once. The Mezzodaemons use mirror image spells to make it harder for them to be hit. One Mezzodaemon casted a reverse gravity spell, Brain and Nate hit the 80 foot ceiling and next round hit the floor. A centaur ran into the room to catch Nate on his way down helping him break his fall. The other Mezzodaemon casted a reverse gravity spell and a centaur ,Tim, Jeff, and Jake fly up and hit the ceiling. While on the ceiling Tim casts a wind walk spell and all four of them become a misty form and can fly about avoiding the deadly fall back to the ground.

During the battle Tim casts a silence spell in several corners of the room to stop the dipole worms from casting their magic missile spells. A daemon tries to use telekinesis to throw Tim into the silenced area to prevent Tim from casting any more spells but Tim resisted the telekinesis and stayed put. While misted Jeff swallowed two of his misted healing potions and then rematerialized behind a Mezzodaemon backstabbed it and outright killing the Mezzodaemon.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian enter another room that has 3 large pyramids each with a high level drow cleric and wizard on top of it. At the base of each pyramid is 50 zombies. The drow were prepared and cast a silence spell on the group to stop any spells from being cast and a fireball to hurt everyone. The group swiftly retreats to hash out a plan.

Tim uses a plane shift spell to take everyone to Tim’s happy place to heal for the night and regain spells. The next day they plane shifted back to surprise the drow. Tim used a wind walk spell on the group and each of them paired off to fly to the top of a pyramid and fight a pair of drow. The fight was decidedly one sided and the drow were slaughtered swiftly. What went from an easy win for the drow the day before became a short losing battle the next day.

Nate, Candance, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian enter the next room. One by one each person enters a sand filled room with 8 strange looking statues. The statues look like storm giants with grotesque faces. The group examines the statues, unable to discover any clues. Jeff then enters the room and the trap is set. The door disappears and the statues animate and attack. Their stine skin is hard to hit and even worse they have damage reduction 10.

Candace casts a Stone to Flesh spell on two statues that reduces one of the statue’s armor class and removes the damage reduction. Both Tim and Candance cast dispel magic on the several statues removing their damage reduction abilities. The fight was close, fortunately Brian with his Axe of Sharpness rolled a natural 20 twice, both times decapitating a foe. Brian has used his Axe of Sharpness for a full year without a critical hit and now he does it twice in one night.

Nate, Candance, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian enter the next room, the last room on level 3. The room is full of broken furniture and has a large bonfire in the middle of the room. The ceiling is only 10 feet tall so the bonfire’s flames lick the ceiling and Brian needs to crawl on all fours to enter the room. As people enter the room they need to push aside broken furniture which disturbes small white mice that are seen scattering about.

A wave of fear overcomes the group. Nate, Tim and Dino-dog suddenly see spiders crawling all over them and the only “normal” response is to jump into the fire and burn off the spiders. Next Jake and Candace feel a large invisible hand lift them off the ground and throw them in the fire, holding them down. Brian sees a small white mouse standing on top of a broken chair lifting up his little white paw as if he was lifting up Jake and holding Jake’s body in the fire.

Brian grabs Candace and pulls her out of the fire. Tim recovers from his fear and leaves the fire. Jake breaks away from the invisible hand and leaves the fire. White mice scurry out of the trash and transform into 4 foot tall demons that block members of the group from leaving the fire. Jeff shoots a pair of arrows into the room while standing in the hall. Next the room is filled with a stenching fog that blocks line of sight. No one can see more than 5 feet. 3 more mice transform into demons but these 3 are large 9’ demons. Jeff moves into the room to join in the melee. Candance uses her magic missile spells against the demons. Tim casts a Remove Fear on Nate and when that fails he pulls Nate out of the fire just before Nate dies. Otherwise Tim is busy each round healing people caught in the fire and eventually needs to cast a mass heal restoring everyone to full health.

After the battle the bonfire subsides and opens up to a passageway to the fourth level of Lolth’s Demonweb. The orange path.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian wander the 4rth level of Lolth’s Demonweb, the orange path. They find another door but this time when the door is opened the other side is a new world. A desert word, Arrakis.The group stands on large rock outcropping peering at the desert. Half a mile away a group of 12 men all dressed in white are walking across the sand, they are heading towards a large metallic spider shaped building. As the group of fremen approach the spider build it begins to make a loud steady thumping noise. Soon a 100 yard circle of sand begins to sift around and a sand worm rises. 4 of the fremen run up to the worm and place their hooks on the worm, capturing it and riding it into the deep desert. Tim casts wind walk on the group and they all fly as clouds to the 8 fremen left behind. The fremen ar fascinated by the clouds. Jake is the first to materialize, the fremen are mystified and whisper to each other Muad'Dib? The fremen ask Jake “Are you a Guik-moter? You can fly!”. Next Nate materializes, they see Nate’s horrific half-orc face and sympathizes for Nate, surly Nate is the victim of Harkonnen brutality. Next Brian materializes, a storm giant, The fremen scream “Its a Djoust!” and run in fear.

Tim casts another wind walk spell and the group flies back up to the rock outcropping. The fremen overcome their fear and climb up the rock outcropping toward the group. This time Jake and Tim materialize. Tim offers them a peace offering by creating water for them using his spells. The freman invite Tim and Jake to come to their sietche so Tim can cast all the water creating spells he can for two days into their catch basin. As a reward Tim and Jake are given a crysknife and a hand held thermonuclear detonator. The next day the group walks back through the door and returns to the fourth level of Lolth’s Demonweb.

Nate, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian continue to wander on the orange path and find another door that leads to another world. This time they are on a cliff overlooking the ocean and a city made out of purple stone. Out on the ocean is a small fleet of wooden merchant ships fighting a golden Melnibonéan battle barge. The battle barge lobs a fiery ball that swiftly consumes a much smaller wooden ship. The wooden ships have no hope to win this sea battle. Tim casts wind walk on the group and they fly to the battle barge and down one of the hatches. A Melnibonéan wizard noticed them and summoned an insect-shaped demon to chase them. In the lower decks the group fights the demon and after the battle Tim uses the thermonuclear detonator to blow a hole in the ship. The group wind walks away and back through the door as the golden Melnibonéan battle barge sinks

Nate, Candance, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian walk through the next door to find themselves on earth in the 1500’s in Transylvania. From the mountain top view they see a small walled town and several castles on mountain tops. The banners on the closest castle have an image of the metallic spider building on it. The group begins to walk towards the town when they discover an abandoned woodcutter's cottage. Jake and Jeff enter in to explore. Jake reads a series of newspaper articles left on the dinner table that describe the last 20 years. 20 years ago a volcanic eruption in Greenland caused Europe to become dark and overcast. The darkness continues. Vampires now rule by day and night. The vampires have grouped together in opposing and competing tribes, calling themselves houses. The great vampire houses are feuding because of limited human resources. Human crops are failing because of the darkness and humans are starving and dying and the vampires need humans to feed. If the vampires feed too much they will lose all the humans. If they don’t feed enough, a rival vampire house will defeat them. The group decides to walk to the nearest caste.

A bored looking vampire awaits the group on the road. He commands the group to leave. When the group attacks him, he is forced to go into gaseous form and flee back to his coffin to reform, he is very surprised. Tim casts wind walk, the group flys to the castle. They find an open roofed tower and land on it and re-materialize. A vampire lookout on the tower asks “What kind of vampires are you?” They slay the vampire guards. Soon after that a large group of vampires in mist form fly around the group on the top of the tower. Jake is charmed and walks off of the tower. Jake’s demon wings open up and he flies off with a vampire as the battle rages on.

When the battle is over the group wind walks down to the courtyard and enters through the front door of the main keep.

Nate, Candance, Tim, Jeff, and Brian enter the main keep. Jake is nowhere in sight. At the end of a long entranceway the group faces off with 4 drider and the vampire lord sitting on his throne. He says “Leave now and I will spare your lives. Your friend now belongs to me. If I die I will lose my telepathic link to my comrades who will kill your friend. An acquaintance of ours has left some of her friends behind to help me”. Tim casts a blade barrier on the drider. The rest of the group moves forward to engage in battle. A mammoth spider 70’ in diameter joins the vampire and drider to battle the group. The mammoth spider casts a web that engulfs Jeff and Candace. Candance uses burning hands to burn through the web. Brian using his axe of sharpness decapitates the vampire lord and severs three of the spider’s legs. With Tim casting flame strike and Candance using fireballs the spider is eventually killed.

The group wanders the now empty halls of the castle’s keep and find their way to the basement below, the rest of the vampires have fled. On a ceremonial shrine Jake’s dead body is found. He is drained of all his blood. His arms are so full of puncture marks he looks like a heroin addict. Surrounding Jake’s body are 20 coffins. Each with a defeated vampire lying in sleep and recovering. The group uses wooden stakes to slay the sleeping vampires and Tim uses a resurrection spell to bring Jake to life again. After a quick search Jeff discovers a secret door that leads to the room that the vampire lord’s coffin resides in. The headless body of the vampire lord is in the coffin. Brian drives a stake through his heart and then burns the head.

The group decides to rest the night in the now abandoned castle and recover. The next morning they decide to use wind walk and fly to spy on the other two castles. Both filled with vampires. They choose a castle to attack and land on the castle walls surrounding a vampire guard. They quickly kill him and the other vampire guards run in fear screaming “The white vampires are here! To arms!”

Nate, Candance, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian enter the main keep of the castle. It’s a long and dark room. 200 ft long, 80 ft wide and 120 ft tall, barely lit by torches that are attached to pillars along the wall with a totally dark ceiling. The group creeps three quarters of the way in and then a huge swarm of bats descend down from the ceiling. The bats swarm around the group and block the group's way and their ability to see more than 10 feet. Candace tosses a fire ball into the swarm to try and thin out the bats. In the flash of light she notices something larger than bats flying about. Next the group is attacked by monstrous looking vampires. Half human half bat-beast. Brain and Tim turn a large number of the undead vampires but eventually the fight comes down to a hand-to-hand brawl. When the last of the vampires are slayed the bat swarm breaks up and the bats fly back up and rest on the ceiling

The group rounds the corner and it’s another long hallway with pillars but not as wide. The first pair of vampires that show themself are super fast. The group never sees them arrive, they just seem to magically appear in front of the group. One vampire straps a pig nose on Nate’s face and another hangs a dead bat on Tim’s holy symbol. Just as fast as the vampires appear they disappear. The group creeps further in and a fight ensues. The new vampires are so fast they are almost impossible to hit. Candance shoots a vampire in the face with an acid missile and melts its face off as Tim casts a sunlight spell that surrounds him with natural daylight. These vampires have not had to worry about natural daylight in 20 years. The vampires burn in Tim’s daylight and flee to a maze of small passages deeper in the keep.

Nate, Candance, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian enter the main chamber that leads to a maze of halls. Tim casts a Daylight spell on Nate and Brian. Nate, Candance, Tim, Jake and Jeff enter the hallways that are too small for Brian. Brian stays behind and stands guard in case any vampires try to escape. The vampires retreat in fear of Nate’s daylight and eventually Nate corners 4 vampires in a small room deep inside the maze. The vampires are swiftly slain with help of Candace’s lightning bolt. Nate corners three more vampires in the same fashion and the vampires scream out in a foreign language. Candace uses a comprehend language spell to listen to what is being screamed. “The day has returned and it is traveling in the tombs! We all must run and hide in the woods as we have in the old days.”

At the entrance of the maze many vampires arrive only to find Brian blocking their exit. Brian does not attack and holds the vampires at bay using his protection from evil. The vampires can’t touch Brian because of his protection from evil and while standing near him they burn because of the daylight spell. Only one vampire manages to squirm past Brian and runs in fear out of the castle.

The rest of the group returns from the maze when they hear Brain yelling for assistance. A giant sized humanoid bug creature steps out from the maze with his boom-stick and shoots at Brian over and over. Candace uses her lightning bolts, Tim his blade barriers and eventually The large humanoid bug creature is slain as well as a large number of vampires. As the large humanoid bug creature is slain, he and his boom-stick turn into flames and ashes and then all the remaining vampires disintegrate. The source of the vampires has been defeated.

Nate, Candance, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian rest in the now empty vampire castle for the night. In the morning Tim casts Plane Shift and the group travels to Tim’s happy place. A vast desert with a beautiful oasis to rest in. Brian and Tim are convinced that Jake has turned evil and are afraid to face Lolth because Jake may turn on the group. Tim starts to cast a 12 hour Atonement spell to fix Jake. As the spell nears completion Jake goes unconscious and his demonic bat wings act independently and he flies off. Candace casts haste and fly spells on Brian who chases after Jake and brings him back so Tim can complete the Atonement spell. After the spell Brian still senses Jake is still evil. It’s the wings, they are sentient apart from Jake’s mind.

After a week in Tim’s happy place the group returns to Transylvania. Villagers have fearfully encamped at the entrance of the vampire castle hoping to find food. When the villagers see the monstrous races of the group the villagers run in fear. Candace uses a charm person and forces a villager from running to return and answer questions about what is going on. The villager tells the group that all 3 castles are vampire free and the village people are hoping that the vampires never come back but with the sky overcast as it has been for 20 years they fear the vampires will return. Candice and Tim take turns casting control weather spells for a month and eventually and permanently break the weather pattern. The village will have sunshine again. Having completed this task the group returns through the door and back to Lolth’s demon web.

The group travels to Lolth's demon web and finds another interdimensional door that takes them to a beautiful field with a blue sky and clouds. As the group looks about It is clearly midday but there is no sun in the sky. After searching the area for about 20 minutes. The sky dims for a few seconds, comes back on to full light and repeats the dimming routine 3 more times. Then the sky goes black and dark. The group decides to settle down for the night using a light spell as a campfire. During the night Brian and Jake notice movement in the tall grass. 3 chipmunks step into the light each wearing spiffy vests and chattering quickly in high pitched voices. They are excited to find new friends and ask if they are coming to the festival tomorrow morning. The group agrees to come to the festival the next morning. Hundreds of chipmunks run through the grass to the festival and 8 stay behind to show the group the way in the morning.

In the morning the group is guided by the chipmunks to the festival. In the middle of the grass field is an area the size of a football field of what looks like fractured glass. It is full of chipmunks cheerfully spinning tops and dancing with the tops. Soon the guest of honor arrive ollimen from the nearby city. The ollimen are 8 foot tall humanoids with elephant heads. The ollimen assume that the group are the new mutants arriving from the swamp village.The ollimen have a task they want the group to do for them. Take a dangerous device to be disposed of at the end of the world. It's a long journey, it could take 2 or 3 days.

Nate, Candance, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian accept the ollimen’s task to take the dangerous device to the end of the world to be destroyed. The object is small and looks like a rubik's cube. The ollimen offer a guide for the group, a 30 foot long rainbow colored snake with a human-ish head. The snake tells the group that he has known every part of the world including small parts of other worlds for the last 30 generations. Tim casts a wind walk spell on everyone and what would have take 3 days will now only take 3 hours of traveling. The group swiftly flies as clouds over the bizarre mutated fields and forests. Another object is sighted flying after them and moving 3 times faster than they are. It is a metal barrel with a spinning yellow light on top of its head and a single long metallic elephant trunk looking appendage. After it catches up to the group it sucks in the cloud known as Jeff. Several group members land and become solid again but before Candace has a chance to transform she is also sucked in. Nate throws a lasso on the flying barrel that is 20 feet in the air. Tim casts a spiritual weapon spell and begins to hammer at the barrel. Both Nate and Brian are holding on to the rope and the barrel still manages to fly 50 feet higher. Brian casts a lightning bolt and destroys the barrel allowing Jeff and Candace to escape

Tim casts another windwalk and the group continues to fly towards the end of the world. As the group nears the end of the world they stop being able to breathe in their cloud forms and immediately land and transform back. They realize they are stuck in an alien radiation field and are slowly burning. Candace casts haste on each person and the group makes a run for it with Tim occasionally pausing to cast healing spells. When the group reaches the end of the world, a solid metallic looking wall that reaches up to the sky, guarding the disposal shoot is a 50’ tall, ten tentacled, eyeball. The fight was fiercest and Tim cast multiple flam strikes and Candace code of cold spells.

After the battle the group threw the dangerous device into the shoot and ran away. After leaving the alien radiation field they flew back to the interdimensional door and back to Lolth’s demon web.

Nate, Candance, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian enter the last room of Lolth’s demon web. As they pass the giant sized double doors the doors disappear, there is no turning back. A loud female voice announces each person’s name as they enter the area. Mysteriously Jake is announced as “Jake the betrayer”. The room is a large area in Lolth’s demon web and her demon ship is there. Lolth’s demon ship is 175’ wide, 400’ long and 100’ tall. It's shaped like a spider and made out of metal, it almost looks like a spaceship. Jeff enters the front by way of steps leading into the mouth. Inside he sees a 6 armed female demon with a lower body in the form of a snake. She is sitting casually behind a desk, hand number 1 painting the nails on hand number 2, hand number 4 has an emery board in it and is filing the nails of hand number 3. With her 5th hand she hails Jeff to come in and with her 6th hand points to the signin book. She says “Don’t be shy honey, come in and sign the registry. I’ll take you in. The entire group goes in and each signs the book. When the demon sees Jake she says “Hi Jake, you don’t need to sign in again” She leads the group past rooms with hill giant guards and another room with frost giant guards to a set of large double doors. The demon says, “She’s in there and expecting you. Nice work Jake.”

On the other side of the double doors the view is all in black and white like an old tv show. Tim is the first to step into the room. He finds that all his preparatory spells are dispelled and all his magical equipment feels heavy. Heavy as if the equipment was no longer magical. Tim moves further in and finds that once he is 30’ from the door his magical equipment is working again but his preparatory spells remain dispelled. Jeff and Brian join Tim in the room and then the spectral form of Lolth appears before them and materializes. This is the big battle they have been waiting for.

Tim casts a blade barrier and multiple flame strikes. Candace casts haste on Brian and several lightning bolts and cone of cold spells. Brian invokes his smite evil powers and together with Jake, Nate ensues a mighty battle. Each round Lolth casts a complete heal on herself, never attacking. Some of Lolth's henchmen enter the battle to help Lolth but Nate’s centaurs and elves stop most of these helpers. After 12 rounds the group has used up most of their powers and Lolth turns back into a spectral form and Lolth’s voice is heard laughing. The group has been fighting an illusionary phantasmal force replica of Lolth. Her disembodied voice says “Now that I have seen your tactics I will know how to protect myself. Except next time you will not be as powerful because you have used up most of your strength already!, Ha ha ha ha.”

Nate, Candance, Tim, Jake, and Jeff continue to explore Lolth’s spider ship. They find a series of 10 x 10 foot rooms with doors in all directions. Eventually finding a hallway running parallel to the small rooms. An arctic cold blast hits everyone but Jeff who is further away exploring unopened doors. The cold bast of air came right out of a solid wall. The group searches further and a second cold blast hits them. Opening the correct door Jake discovers a white dragon in a large room. Nate tries to squeeze past Jake to get into the room and discovers that the wall is illusionary. That is how the dragon breathed through it. The battle begins, Tim steps through the illusionary wall and casts a flame strike spell on the dragon. Soon the dragon is slain.

In another area of the many doored rooms Jeff opens a door and discovers a black dragon that sprays acid on Jeff. Candace is the first to help Jeff by casting magic missiles on the black dragon. The rest of the group arrives and slays the black dragon. Next they discover stairs going down to a lower level. Following the stairs down Jake suspected that the wall at the bottom of the stairs is an illusion. He is correct, he steps though and there in a very large room is the real Loloth with her minions.

Nate, Candance, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian stand in front of the illusionary wall knowing that Lolth and her minions are on the other side. Again the female announcer makes an introduction of who has just entered the realm. “We welcome Dipole and associates”. The group decides it is time to attack before Dipole arrives. Tim runs into a solid piece of the illusionary wall and is stopped. Jake moves in and is surrounded by giant insects. Next Nate charges in and runs past Jake only to discover that the floor around Lolth is actually a viscous liquid quicksand. Using his extraordinary physical feat he escapes the sludge. Brian is next into the room and charges into the sludge. Jeff does the same, hoping to be able to run fast enough to get to Lolth but ends up only half way there and next to Brian. Lolth uses her spider web to snag Jake and pull him into the sludge. There is no swimming or moving in the sludge, just a slow sinking. The entrance past the open illusionary portion of the wall is another No Magic Zone. Spells cannot be cast in it, into it or through it and the giant insects are blocking the group from getting outside of the No Magic Zone. Before entering the room Tim casts an earthquake spell that opens fissures in the floor of the room causing several of the giant insects to fall through. Then Tim joins the melee.

Jeff crawls on top of Brian and leaps closer to Lolth but more importantly outside of the No Magic Zone where he uses a scroll to cast a wall of iron forming a dock on top of the sludge next to himself and Brian. Both use the dock to climb out of certain drowning death in the sludge. Candace uses a jump spell to jump over the giant insects and past the No Magic Zone where she casts an ice storm spell on Lolth. Next she casts a wall of fire on Lolth which stops Lolth from pulling people into the sludge. Jake uses his bat wings and flies out of the sludge and attacks Lolth from the air.

Just as things were looking bad enough for the group, Dipole and his associate entered the room from the other side. In the lead are a pair of flesh golems dressed in 1920’s gangster style pinstripe suits carrying tommy guns. They are followed by dipole worms and many gobraptors. To the group's surprise the flesh golems start firing on Lolth forcing her to engage the new threat by backing up behind the wall of fire and unseen by the group. The group then barely manages to finish off the rest of the giant insects leaving them alone and wondering what happened to Lolth, Dipole and his associates.

Nate, Candance, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian decide to follow through the doors Dipole exited leaving the elves and centaurs behind. While the group is on the far side of the room the elves decide to search for secret doors in the hallway and discover another illusionary wall choke full of ogres. Jeff is in another hallway on the opposite side of the large room. Jeff opens a door to discover a spell casting drider and a chimera.

Most of the group run to the elves and centaurs to help them. Jeff backs up from the drider and chimera who follow him into the hallway, The drider casts a wizard lock on the door into the large room sealing Jeff with them alone. Jeff opens another set of doors looking for an escape route but instead he finds 4 ropers that attack him. Nate is on the other side of the wizard locked door, unable to open it to help Jeff.

Tim, Candace, Jake and Brian help the elves and centaurs kill off the ogres. Jeff uses a spell on a scroll and turns himself into a gaseous form and slides under the wizard locked door and into the anti magic zone that returns him back to his solid form. The drider disenchants the door and opens it, the chimera breaths fire on Nate.The ropers move into the room. The chimera takes flight over Lolth's sludge and breathes fire down on people. Jake uses his bat wings and flies over the sludge and fights the chimera in the air. The ropers grab and pull Jeff towards them while Nate stands between the ropers and Jeff, protecting Jeff. Tim flame strikes the drider killing it. Jake kills the chimera in the air and the rest of the group eventually kill the ropers.

Nate, Candance, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian decide to follow in the direction that Dipole went. Then everyone had a weird sense of moving without moving. A feeling of being turned inside out and then back again. After entering the next room they felt a glitch in the matrix, a sense of deja vu, 8 inch smiley face emojis appeared floating in the air in random places. They looked at the group, flipped, and then transformed into a new emoji face. The group felt another glitch in the matrix and the smiley faces disappeared. The door to the next room had a large out of place doorknob. Lolth's ship has a very modern metallic look and the doorknob was an oversized wooden handle. As Jeff went to grab the doorknob a face appeared on it and asked Jeff if he was authorized to enter the room. The doorknob tried to warn the group that they would be sorry if they entered the room and that it would report them to the proper authorities Another glitch in the matrix and the doorknob disappeared.

Everyone entered the room and suddenly Candace disappeared for just 2.5 seconds. When she reappeared she was angry, 25 years older and her hair had grown out with gray streaks. For 25 years Candace had been stuck on a green floating plastic disk in the middle of nowhere and she believed that the group had abandoned her there without even trying to find and retrieve her. At this moment everyone else stopped moving in fear of stepping into a similar trap. At the far end of the room a set of double doors opened and a large group of gobraptors were on the other side. Another glitch in the matrix is felt and gravity fails, sending everyone and the gobraptors floating in the air. The ship accelerates and both groups fly through the air toward the rear of the ship and into the large room where they had combatted Lolth.

The gobraptors and the group engage in weighless combat. Jake uses his wings to fly at the gobraptors, everyone else claws and swims through the air to move anywhere. Tim uses a sound burst spell in the center of the gobraptors that sends the gobraptors flying in all directions. As the last of the gobraptors are slain the ship crashes and gravity returns sending everyone flying to the front of the ship. The group panics and decide to abandon ship before it explodes. Working their way to the entrance they can see the spider head of Lolth’s ship is damaged and buried into the ground. Fortunately Jeff had a move earth spell written down on a scroll. Removing the dirt and debris from the entrance allows the group to see a large group of gobraptors, dipole worms and ropers awaiting for the survivors to appear from the wreckage. The fight was fast and decisive, the group kicked enemy butt. At the end of the battle another large flying metallic ship is seen wobbling in the air with a piece of Loth’s spider ship head sticking out of its side. The ship crashed on the nearby peaks of the Barrier Mountains.

Nate, Candance, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian decide to fly to the peaks of the Barrier Mountains using Tim’s wind walk spell. The terrain looks very familiar to Nate, Tim, Jake and Jeff. They recognize it as the prehistoric jungle that they chased Dipole through, back when Dipole still had only one head. As they fly past the area where Dipole’s tower was, they see the tower and a younger Dipole bring a charmed velociraptor into his tower. Before they can reach him the tower disappears and with it the velociraptor. So they decide to fly on to the ship that crashed on top of the mountains.

They discover a door that only opens when they turn from cloud form to human form so then they enter the ship. After entering the door it does not open again to let them out. The first thing they notice while Inside the ship is a wishing well. Candace tosses a coin in and the coin floats without falling down. She reaches in and retrieves her coin. Upon closer inspection, inside the well are two sets of ladder rungs. One moving up and the other moving down.The room has two violet colored doors and two hallways. From a dark hallway two dalek looking robots join the group. The robots don’t do anything offensive, they just begin to follow the group. Candace decides to try and place her coin in a slot on a robot but a 9 inch force field surrounding the robot stops her.

Nate, Candance, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian decide to explore further into this mysterious ship. The first room Brian enters a lurker from above descends on him, covering Brian from his head down to his knees, crushing and suffocating him. Hits from the rest of the group threaten to hit Brian also. Candace uses a shocking grasp spell on the creature, afterall Brian is immune to electricity. After the lurker from above is killed the room is searched and an unusual amulet is discovered. It looks like leaded glass and is violet in color. The same color as the two doors that they could not open. Going back to the first room and approaching the violet doors with the amulet opens the doors. Both rooms have strange white garments. The material is thin and feels like silk, there are shirts, pants, and unusual helmets. The helmets have glass covering the face of them. When Candace places them on they magically make an airtight seal that is quite comfortable. Everyone but Brian takes a set. Brian is too big to wear it.

The group moves further down the hallway. There is a series of rooms with no doors that contain hordes of short strange vegetable looking creatures that are murmuring to themselves in an unknown language. Candace casts a comprehend language spell and overhears that the strange vegetable creatures are asking each other. “How good tasting are these new creatures. What will be the best way to prepare them for dinner?”. Candace surprised them with a fireball killing an entire room of the vegetable creatures. The remaining vegetable creatures attack. The robots then activate and attack the group too. Tim casts a blade barrier spell on the robots to little effect. The robots move in closer and together using their yellow rays throw one of Nate’s centaur through the blade barrier. Brain casts a lightning bolt on a robot and destroys it. Candace casts a lightning bolt on the other robot and destroys it. After the battle is finished a brown and jet black amulet are found being worn by the vegetable creatures.

Nate, Candance, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian decide to hide in one of the rooms with the white garments. One hour later the door opens and two more security robots enter. After fighting the robots the group decides to move to the other room with white garments and this time Candance uses a wizard lock spell on the door. One hour later the door attempts to open but does not. The door is attempted to be opened every hour as the group rests.

After resting the group decides to continue down the hallway. They pass 2 more open rooms full of vegemites. Candance cast fireball into each of these rooms killing the vegemites. Vegemites from a 3rd room come out and charge the group. More vegemites attack from behind and then 3 security robots join in and attack the group. Tim casts a blade barrier spell on two robots Candace uses burning hands spells and everyone else hacks at the vegemite people.

A robot throws Jake into the blade barrier, another robot uses its ray gun on Jake knocking him unconscious. The shooting robot grabs Jake and carries him down the anti-grav chute.

Nate, Candace, Tim, Dino-dog, Jeff, and Brian search the area for anything that may help them. Tim and Brian try to pry the nose off of a robot hoping to use its ray gun as a weapon. After failing to get a raygun for themselves they further search more rooms, and find a room that has odd and unrecognizable tools. Soon Candace and Tim arm themselves with odd 3’ tall cylinders that have a pair of parallel handles and a cone pointing out of one side. The group then decides to follow the robot that took Jake.

Descending the anti-grav shoot to the next level they find Jake's golden sword and his cloak of displacement. The level is only 10’ tall so Candace uses an alter size spell to shrink Brian down to 8’ tall. Brian then equips himself with Jake's cloak and sword. The group finds an odd looking table. Candace uses comprehend languages to decipher the printed label on the side of the table. It is a 3’ x 6’ self propelled equipment cart. Candace decides to drive it around.

This level is vast and empty with odd walls that are covered with pipes and blinking lights. Eventually they find a service robot standing next to a wall recharging. Thet group casually walks past the robot and the robot begins to blink a blue light. Soon 3 police robots show up to arrest the group. During the fight Tim pulled out his new odd shaped device and pressed both buttons using his thumbs and discovered that it was a fire extinguisher. Candace used her lightning bolts to destroy the robots.

Nate, Candace, Tim, Jeff, and Brian finish searching this level of the ship deck and decide to go down to the next level using an anti-grav chute. This level is 40’ tall and the entrance is full of large vines. Candace walks up and touches a vine. The vine grabs Candace and starts to choke her. Brian cuts the vine, freeing Candace. Tim uses Flame strike and Candace uses several fireballs to clear out the dangerous shrubbery.

Next to the anti-grav chute is a violet colored door. Candace opens it and the group discovers 4 robots. One police robot and 3 maintenance robots. Using a chain lightning spell Candace and the group quickly destroy the robots. The group discovers another door that leads to a large warehouse full of crates containing farming equipment.

At the far end of the warehouse is a strange 8’ x 8’ x 8’ crate with frosted glass and a large black dial on top. Candace experiments with the dial, the crate opens and 4 couatl fly out. The group attacks them, one of the couatl heals the others and a second couatl casts a flame strike on the elves and centaurs knocking them unconscious. Tim quickly does a complete heal on the elves and centaurs. Brian recognizes these creatures are agents of good, not evil, so the group backs off. The couatl tells them to beware of the creature sneaking up from behind. The couatl fly over the group and surround an invisible creature, an intellect devourer. The couatl kill the intellect devourer. The intellect devourer has been following the group waiting for Candace to fall asleep so it could eat her brains.

Nate, Candance, Tim, Dino-dog, Jeff, and Brian continue to search the warehouse area. Candace opens a violet colored door and there are more vampire vines in the hallway. She casts a fireball and destroys them. Exploring further the group finds a disco lounge, kitchen and a bar. While in the bar a lurker above swoops down and engulfs Tim. Brian pulls on it, Nate uses his flaming sword to burn it, Candace uses her burning hands on it, and Dino-dog claws it. Eventually they kill it before Tim is killed.Through a thural examination of the ceiling another lurker above is spotted and dealt with before it engulfs anyone.

Further down the hallway odd looking birds are flying about. Candace, Brian and Tim move up and the birds fly in a strange but organized pattern above the three of them. The birds spin a large spider web style net and drop it on Candace, Brian and Tim. Tim casts a flame strike on the birds and themselves to get free, killing the birds and mostly killing Candace.

Another door is opened and 4 more robots are discovered. Three service robots and a police robot. After Candace uses a chain lightning spell the robots are swiftly dealt with. Brain makes a great cleave and cuts the head off the robot. The group examines the inside of the robot head and discovers odd looking small thin green rectangle boards inside.

Nate, Candace, Tim, Dino-dog, Jeff, and Brian finish searching a cargo bay full of building supplies. Leaving the cargo bay through a different door the hallway is filled with vampire vines. Candace kills it with a fireball. Further down the hallway a diner is discovered and an old damaged robot is still serving meals. The robot seats Brian. Candace and Nate join Brian at the booth. The server robot returns with old moldy food. Tim casts a purify food and drink spell and the food returns to its original state, nice tasty fish. Then the elves and centaurs also join in for the meal.

Next the group moves further down the hall and in another room discovers a police robot with 3 service robots. Candace casts a couple of chain lightning spells and the fight ends swiftly. The group finds another anti-grav chute but before they can examine it green slime falls off of the ceiling and onto Brian. Candace kills it with a lightning bolt, Brian himself is immune to lightning. Brian goes down the anti-grav chute first. At the bottom is an umber hulk that mesmerizes Brian. Tim is next down the chute, he flame strikes the umber hulk killing hit. Behind the burnt umber hulk are two detached human arms. One burnt detached arm starts to crawl away. It has a ring on it. A ring of regeneration. These are Jake's arms.

The group follows Jake’s crawling arm into a large room that is a jungle. This room is humid, full of mist and plant life. First the group encounters corkscrew grass that Candace kills with a cone of cold. Next there is a tall plant that Tim attacks using a spiritual hammer. The plant retaliates by shooting sleeping darts at Tim, knocking him out. Jeff and the elven archers line up and shoot arrows and kill off the plant.

Nate, Candace, Tim, Dino-dog, Jeff, and Brian continue to follow Jake’s detached crawling arm that is wearing the ring of regeneration. They see a cute bunny rabbit sitting on a stump, which is a sheep-in--wolves-clothing monster. Brian splits the stump in half with his giant axe. Next they find a 30’ tall tree with large fruit on the top of the tree. Brian lifts Jeff up who grabs the fruit. The fruit is soft and bursts like a water ball full of stinking ammonia that pours down and douses Jeff and Brian.

The group passes past several other interesting oddities and enters a swampish area. A pair of shambling mounds rise up out of the swamp muck. During the fight Jeff is completely enveloped in the mucky body of the shambling mound. He fights to get out and just as he is about to escape Candace uses a lightning bolt on the shambling mound making it grow to twice its original size and preventing Jeff from escaping. The shambling mound moves with Jeff still inside down a stream and heads towards a sewer pipe. Candace casts a wall of stone spell blocking the shambling mound’s escape. By the time they kill the shambling mound Jeff is unconscious and is not breathing. Brian heals up Jeff.

The group continues to follow Jake’s arm. They see another spike shooting plant. Candace casts a protection from missiles spell and Tim, Tim casts spiritual hammer and walks up to the dangerous plant and hammers it from a distance while its spikes bounce off of him.

The group follows Jake’s arm to a lake with a causeway to an island. On the island is a large bird cage with Jake sitting on a perch with no arms and only clothed in his underwear looking very sad and dejected. The robot that had captured Jake mistook Jake for an escaped bird from the menagerie because of Jake’s bat wings. Jake’s arm reattaches to Jake’s body and he begins to heal up, growing his other arm back. As the group is ready to leave a giant Froghemoth rises up from the lake and attacks.

Nate, Candace, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian decide to leave the spaceship. They take an anti-grav chute back to the original entrance. As the group exits the anti-grav chute one at a time in single file they are met by an angry crowd of vegemites who are prepared for battle.

After the battle the group exits the spaceship and looks down the mountain to see a large monolith near Lolth’s ship. The monolith appears to have come out of the ship. The group decides to go climb down the mountain and inspect the monolith. By the time they get there the monolith is bigger. Candace casts a transmute rock to mud spell and the monolith emits a powerful wave of force throughout the area. The monolith grows faster and the sky darkens. The monolith floats into the sky and grows extremely large. It is the size of a skyscraper. The sky turns black and daylight becomes dim and shadowy. A large dome descends, locking everyone inside for the three way cage match. On one side of you is Lolth with an army of drider, on the other side is Dipole with an army of gobraptors. Both armies are focused on the group. Lolth and Dipole will deal with each other later after the group has been killed. The monolith communicates to everyone that it is the neutral judge of your fate. Win the battle and become gods, lose and be erased from existence and from history.

The monolith communicates that extra-dimensional spells will work. No one can leave or enter until the battle is over. The monolith communicates directly to Tim in a vision. In Tim's vision he sees himself casting a wind walk spell and the group flying about. As they fly overhead, one at a time, each character's wind walk spell is dis-spelled and the character falls to the ground taking 20d6 damage and then are swiftly covered by a horde of enemies and ripped limb by limb. As each character is killed they disintegrate and their atomic particles swirl up as dust and are absorbed by the monolith forever lost, lost to the past, lost to the present and in the future, they are gone forever. Tim's vision ends.

Nate, Candace, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian are stuck between two armies. On one side Lolth with 60 driders and on the opposite side Di-pole with 100 gobraptors. Tim and Candace cast preparatory spells and the group marches towards Di-pole and the gobraptors. Candace casts a haste spell on Jeff. Jeff uses some dust of disappearance and goes invisible. He runs around the gobraptor army towards Di-pole in the back. The rest of the group is about to engage the gobraptors when Dipole casts a fireball on the group. Candace’s minor globe of invulnerability stops the damage and protects the group. The next two rounds Candace casts fireballs into the gobraptor army and Di-pole casts delayed blast fireball spells on the group. The delayed blast fireball spells moves through the minor globe of invulnerability damaging the group terribly. Tim uses both of his mass complete heal spells to keep everyone alive, and is now out of those spells. Just as Jeff steps behind Di-pole to backstab Di-pole, Candace casts a chain lightning spell and targets all of Di-pole’s mirror images. Before Di-pole can recast his mirror image spell, Jeff has a clean shot at backstabbing the real Di-pole and not a mirror image of him. After 4 years of battling this wizard, Dipole is now dead. With several well placed cones of cold spells by Candace the gobraptor army is soon destroyed. Lolth and her army of driders are now about to enter into battle.

Nate, Candace, Tim, Jake, Jeff, and Brian prepare a battle line to face-off Lolth and her army of driders. Candace cast a wall of fire on the driders forcing them to run around the wall. Next Candace casts a fireball killing a large group of drider. Lolth nabs Nate with a web and drags him though her army to force Nate to fight her mono a mono. The elves and centaurs hold the line as driders attack. Jeff hangs in the back shooting his bow. Jake, dino-dog and his sabertooth tiger also hold the line killing drider. Tim casts a flame strike to burn the web off of Nate.Tim cast flame strike on Lolth as Nate is engaged in combat with Lolth. Together they continue to hurt Lolth enough that each round she uses her complete heal ability instead of attacking Nate. Brian charges towards Lolth but gets surrounded and pinned down by the drider army. Eventually both Tim and Candace run out of high level spells. Brian finally fights his way to Lolth and uses his smite evil ability. With the combination of Nate, Candace’s magic missiles and Brian’s smite evil, Lolth is slain. The remaining drider are swiftly finished off. The dome is lifted, the players are victorious. In a nearby field a magical tower appears and a low level single headed version of Di-pole steps out for his very first time into the prehistoric world. Candace kills him with a single magic missile spell, changing the past and setting right what once went wrong.