Halloween means Character Side Quest for Die Hard Gamers!

CHARACTER INTRODUCTION, WHAT'S A BARBARIAN?

So we were down a few players for the halloween game, because of folks having party goodness to go to, but for the die hards and a new to the campaign player, it seems like a good time to have character introduction sidequesting action.

We lead off with the PC's having escaped the Lolth tower and searching the Howling Hag Gatekeeper and to stop Lotus from doing something stupid, in the process of rafting down the primary current of the swamp lands, the party comes across a 26 year old chainmail wearing human with claw mark scaring on his face and body, gripping an axe with spiked protrusions massocistically placed on the handle. The party approaches cautiously as their NPC river guide attempts to disguise his cowardess in an offer to tie off the raft up stream from the brooding Human.

The party asks what the barbarian what he is doing in the swamp, he replys 'waiting for death.' To which the party says something along the lines of 'you picked a good place to do it, there's plenty of that around here.' The party probes him further if he knows of a 'witch' around here aka. howling hag. He replies 'I do ... you might say I have an axe to grind with her.' The party tells him, we don't know if we can trust you or not as it seems the cercators have agents everywhere, so take us to her but know if you turn on us we won't hesitate to put you down, to which he replys 'you can try.'

The barbarian leads the party to a familiar looking ritual site (reusing old maps), that looks very similar to that of the werewolf den entrance - this time there's a new puzzle. They find the same looking burried cellar off to the side and this time discover long rectangular strips of semi processsed oar, an alchemical agent, and cylindrical spikes. The party sees on the altar 3 holes similar to those that were the keyholes to enter Lolth's tower, but also similar to the size of those cylindrical spikes. The party tests a mixture of the spikes, oar, and alchemical mixture and discover it produces a delayed explosion, which they decide to pour the chemical into the holes in the altar, and rub the oar on 3 spikes and then place them into the holes. Unfortunately it seems as though you must drive the spikes into the holes as they don't go down far enough to start the chain reaction. The party resets the altar and this time they push down onto the spikes and in anticpation of a explosion leap away from the altar between the outer ring of pillars each in a different direction, however one party member fails the check and doesn't make the jump. An explosion underground triggers 4 trap doors placed between the pillars where the party members jumped, so that when the one left behind looks around everyone else has disappeared, sliding down underground tubes into one of 4 detention cells.

The party member left on the surface places transforms his weapon into the same cylinder as the one used to enter lolth's temple and he is transported into the dungeon just outside of the detention cells. But is unable to free the other party members before they find avenues of escape, brute force, teleportation, or etc.

Having escaped their cells, they party proceeds to dive into the cistern that lead to the solo werewolf the last time they were in a similar dungeon. But this time it leads up to a grate somewhere below the fountain room that had a flooding trap in it the last time.

The fighter grabs the rack in the flood room, and the bed (trapped) in another room and props them against the door of the flood room (setting off the matress trap, which misses) before he searches the room for the pressure release switch that last time opened the flood gates to the room, and nearly drowned the party. This time it is hoped it will be the mechanism to unblock the cistern passageway.

The fighter finds a rock and ties a rope to it, tossing and dragging the rock until he hears a click, followed by several loud clangs from the adjoining cells. This initiates suprise round of combat where the shadowfell under the control of another emerge from beneath the grates in the adjoining cells.

The shadow gloom blade, chain wielder, and soldier type emerge from the cells apparently with their eyes clouded over, all wearing the Rygenhijo ninja emblems. The party quickly finds ways around the gloom blads invisibility, the chains shifting reach weapon, and the soldiers double attacks - mostly by a head on we can out damage you sort of way. Though the Rygenhijo ninja appear out of sorts, the party quickly off's them without leaving any alive to question or etc.

After a quick search of the bodies, they find the ninjas' orders, to hunt down someone that looks like what the barbarian did before he was all scarred up, and kill the traitor. However, while it is a sanctioned manhunt, it wasn't ordered by Rygenhijo, these ninja were hired by someone outside of Rygenhijo.

The party feeling like they had solved the puzzle of the cistern re-enter with the barbarian in the lead, he pops out on the otherside of the cistern onto the top of a stone platform carve out of the top of a stallagmite that towers 100ft above a cavern below with only a 10ft wide gap between the ledge the party emerges on and the outer 10ft wide ledge the Kyotenichi emblemed and bloodied female ninja stands.

After some debate about what a running jump entails, the party discovers it isn't such a hard check after all, but some are still hestitant, a joke about indiana jones and the secret walk way is made - partly as a hint to remind players, that a passive check doesn't always cut it, and spending a minor action to use perception may be useful (in this case there was a hidden by artful design a ledge from the inner to the outer that one could walk across).

The female ninja wearing the kyotenichi emblem, seeing the barbarian emerge, already quite injured leaning against her longsword looks at him and says you coward of course you emerge now after your minions have done their dirty work - here to finish me as you did my mother? I won't let you leave here until I know what you did to her back then. She plunges herself onto her blade and as the blade pierces her body, the sharp tail of a black dragon errupts in time with the blade from out of her back, as though her body were being turned inside out and transmuted into this new black dragon form.

A level 4 solo black dragon emerges with 134 hp (-100 hp from max.) The party takes a heavy breath weapon early on, and the cleric heals back the party from that before they make the leap across to the cornered dragon.

The dragon hit by the barbarian's first attack is sent bloodied, and uses it's when first bloodied breath attack as an immediate reaction, again hitting most of the party. She threatens the party, instruct your friend to tell me what I want to know. what does he know of what happened to my mother, did he kill her? (the barbarian responds raising his blade, this is all I know.)

One round of pummeling from the party later, the dragon is on the verge of complete defeat, she uses her cloud of darkness to conceal her escape as she plummets intentionally into the cavern below to escape to the caves. she say, I will not give up, I will find you again when I am healed, and you will tell me what you know of my mother.

The party asks the barbarian a few more questions as to what exactly he knows about the woman's mother and he replies that he doesn't know what happened to her, he was knocked unconscious soon after the battle started that her mother was in. The party finds on the ground a historical headband, with markings of Kyotenichi that stand for the 2nd hokage - the hokage that disappeared on a intercept mission just before the crimson dragon appeared that killed all approaching Rygenhijo ninja near kyotenichi during the last part of the revolution. No one knows for sure what happened to the 2nd hokage after that.

If you guys member anything else or want to add to it, don't forget the comment box.