Next session: Friday, October 1, 1999. Keisha has snacks. Rob, the dwarf still has the lamp oil. Don't lose it.

Session 42 · Friday, September 24, 1999
The Stair Beneath

The party found the way down: a spiral stair behind the high altar, half full of seawater and blocked by something large and green that got up when they arrived. Troll. Tobin cut it in half and then watched in horror as both halves started trying to get back together. Isolde remembered, just in time, what the old ranger in Session 3 said about fire. Wren poured out a flask of lamp oil, Thessaly lit it with a cantrip, and the smell will stay with all of us. At the bottom of the stair they found the Lantern Stone, the thing every lighthouse on the coast was cut from, cracked clean through. As they stood there looking at it, the water in the stairwell went still, and a cold fog started coming up the steps from somewhere below them. End of session. Paul threw a Cheeto at me.

XP: 1,340 each. Treasure: 212 gp, a silver holy symbol (Aldous claimed it), and a potion nobody has tried yet.

Session 41 · Friday, September 17, 1999
Fire in a Small Room

The flooded crypt. Tobin walked face-first into a gelatinous cube he never saw, which is exactly what they're for. He was paralyzed and halfway digested before the others hacked him out. Then, with the cube dead and the corridor clear, a pack of ghouls came around the corner, and Marcus finally got to say the words he's been waiting since July to say: "I cast fireball." Unfortunately, in Second Edition a fireball fills its full volume, and a fireball set off in a ten-foot corridor has a lot of volume to fill and nowhere to go but back. The ghouls died. So did most of Brother Aldous's eyebrows. Marcus says it was worth it. Dana says it was not.

XP: 1,080 each. Rob's dwarf is still sticky.

Session 40 · Friday, September 10, 1999
The Abbot's Library

A quiet night, mostly. The party spent it searching the abbey's upper library, which was dry, because somebody built it to stay dry. Thessaly found a waterlogged spellbook and rolled to learn lightning bolt from it. He made it. Wren found the abbot's last journal, and we learned the name of what's out in the fog: the monks called it the Gray Tide, and the Lantern Stone was the only thing that kept it out of the bay. There was a lot of silence at the table after I read that part out loud. I was very pleased with myself.

XP: 700 each, and a story award for Keisha for reading the journal in a voice.

(No game September 3. Labor Day weekend. Rob was at the lake and the rest of us were at a barbecue pretending not to talk about D&D.)

Session 39 · Friday, August 27, 1999
The Reliquary

Wren found a secret door in the chapter house on her first try, which never happens, and behind it a beautiful silver reliquary chest on a stone table. She checked it for traps. It had none. She reached for the lid. It had teeth. Mimic. It held on to Wren for three rounds while everyone argued about whether hitting it would hit her too. Isolde settled it with both swords. The real treasure was in a niche behind where the mimic had been sitting, which Wren insists she knew all along.

XP: 950 each. Wren's player would like it known she did not scream. Wren's player screamed.

Session 38 · Friday, August 20, 1999
A Moment of Silence for Sir Garrick's Armor

In the upper cloister, a rust monster. For the new people reading this: a rust monster touches metal and the metal falls apart. Sir Garrick's full plate was the most expensive thing anyone in the party owned. Garrick stepped in front of the others to protect them, which was very paladin of him and very bad for the armor. The armor is now a pile of orange flakes in a cloister of a sunken abbey. Wren saved the party's weapons by throwing a handful of iron spikes down the hall, and the monster went after them like a dog after a sandwich. Garrick is wearing Tobin's spare chain mail, which is too short for him, and Paul spent the rest of the night staring at his character sheet.

XP: 820 each. Garrick's armor: priceless.

Session 37 · Friday, August 13, 1999
Low Tide

The Drowned Abbey can only be reached on foot at the lowest tide, down a stone causeway that's under water the rest of the day. The party waited two days in Saltbridge for the tide tables to line up, crossed at dawn, and made it to the abbey gate with maybe an hour to spare. Halfway across, something enormous moved under the water to the left of the causeway and then went away. I didn't say what it was. I'm still not saying. Tobin wants it on the record that he hates the sea.

XP: 400 each, mostly for not falling off the causeway.

Session 36 · Friday, August 6, 1999
The Keeper's Cellar

The lighthouse at Saltbridge went dark two weeks before the party got there. They found the keeper's journal in the lamp room and the keeper himself, and his family, in the cellar, and they were not themselves anymore. Ghouls. Garrick got paralyzed in the first round and stood there like a statue for the rest of the fight. Thessaly, being an elf, did not, and has not stopped talking about it. Brother Aldous turned two of them and the rest went down hard. It was a sad one. We gave the keeper's family a proper burial in the game, which Dana asked for, and I was glad.

XP: 1,150 each.

Sessions 1 through 35, the highlights

These are all in my notebook and I will type them up someday. Until then, the greatest hits:

• Session 1: The party meets in a tavern. I know. I know.
• Session 3: The old ranger at the Harrowmere docks tells them what kills a troll. Nobody writes it down except Ellen.
• Session 7: Mirelle the Bard falls to a carrion crawler in the Harrowmere sewers. Dana rolls up Brother Aldous before we even clean up the table.
• Session 12: Rob moves back to town. Tobin Grell walks out of the fog and asks if anyone is hiring.
• Session 19: Thessaly's spellbook falls in a fire. Marcus has kept three copies ever since.
• Sessions 26 to 29: The young green dragon of Kestrel Tor. Nobody died, but it was close, and everyone learned to hold their breath.
• Session 33: The lighthouse at Harrowmere goes out, and the party finally realizes the job is bigger than they were paid for.