Jewels of the Carnifex report

[beermotor]

IMC, the Baron's witch/consort, Lady Nix, wants to free the thing that's imprisoned by Azazel's semi-undead form beneath the town, but she's fearful of fighting Azazel directly. Mercedes Corteza, the powerful matriarch of the Corteza family, who are opposed to the Baron and hope to wrest power from him soon, engages the party to go into the ruined chapel and below, to retrieve whatever it is that Lady Nix is after and bring it back to the Cortezas. The party, having been rather forcefully reminded by the Baron of their obligation to turn over all recovered artifacts to him first for his right of first purchase, happily agree, as they're hoping the Cortezas will ultimately overthrow the Baron.

So, down they went.

Let me first say, these characters are all level 1. So, I'm probably going to adjust the module downward just a bit on the fly, at least in terms of the monsters (probably not the traps).

And with that said, holy cow, the chasm was by FAR the most deadly encounter ever. I think only two characters actually rolled naturally over the DC 10 strength check just to cross the chasm by grapple/rope. By the time it was all said and done, Ian MacCrohan, the halfling, had burned almost all of his Luck helping people get across, and several characters had to burn their own personal Luck as well. That's a hell of an initial encounter, actually... although I suppose level 3 characters probably have quicker/easier/safer means of getting across (spells maybe?).

And that's not even counting the spider! Which killed Dolores with a tendril of silk. Oops. The party shot the spider to death with arrows, though, and eventually it fell. And somehow, luckily, Dolores survived, although she lost a chunk of her calf (and a point of agility) in the process.

They got through the door into the room of skulls, then climbed up the staircase to find the calcified skeleton at the top and the gold chain. After I described it, they quickly said "no thanks," probably remembering the Doom of the Savage Kings room, and left it alone. Down the stairs at the back they went (completely ignoring the runes on the floor).

Josephine, a warrior, and Silas, a cleric, walked down over to the bowl, but only one was holding a torch, and the shades quickly struck, doing some strength damage. Initiative was rolled, and Dolores went first, shooting an arrow with a natural 20 at the shade... but it passed right though. Everyone nodded sagely. The shades attacked next and did a little bit of strength damage to a few folks, but nothing terrible. Yngwie Malmsteen the dwarf activated the flaming flail of Molan and rolled a 19 total at first, and when I said "miss" everyone was like "oh no, we're screwed," but then Carsten remembered an additional +1 from the flail so it hit, and did plenty of damage to destroy the shade. Then John Craven the cleric stepped into the room and turned unholy: natural 20. The shades fled in terror, where to, nobody knows.

We ended there and Juan Delgado the warrior, Leroy Jenkins the thief, Dolores, John Craven, Shun Tai the elf all hit level 2. (I think that was it.) Unfortunately, given the way these guys just run through stuff, I'm not sure they're going to notice the secret door and will probably barge right into the traps and lose a few more characters before even getting to the Azazel stuff. This is shaping up to be a TPK!