Lacking Natural Simplicity

Attending

• T.K.B. — Labyrinth Lord

• D.B. played James (a Thief) and Hermes (a Magic User), and also played John (a Cleric) who was created by M.A.

• T.A played Arlow (an Elf) and Grimmin (a Dwarf), and also played Elsie (an Elf), who was created by E.A.

Actual Play

They reached the village of Iron City, where the bandits were supposed to have lived, in the late afternoon. They searched several of the houses, until they reached the storehouse. They broke in the door (the tongue of the lock tore out of the jamb) and questioned poor mad Sammy, who was frightened by them but called down enough to talk once they showed him no harm. He babbled about everything but several times repeated to them that they should not let “the eye” see them, and that it roamed at night. They decided to spend the night with him, and barred the door, as best they could.

The next day they searched the rest of the town, found the well, and entered the temple. They pulled out the stones and the key, and luckily pulled the key out last, so no one got bit. James pulled out the red stone, but gave it to Grimmin. Elsie pulled out the green stone. Arlow pulled out the gray stone. James pulled out the gold stone. Hermes pulled out the blue stone. John pulled out the key. After that they opened the Crypt with the key and explored room 1, and over the course of several days opened all the burial vaults in that room, killed the undead, and found the treasure and the keys. They had to rest and heal at least twice and each time took at least two days.

After clearing out the burial vaults in room 1, they went down the stairs to room 2, where T.A. insisted on searching for secret doors, repeatedly, using up almost five hours of daylight. Eventually they opened the door with the key from burial vault E. Entering, they heard the sound from the east end of the corridor, investigated, and found the pit, 4. Seeing the green-daubed hole, they decided to investigate and James slid down a rope held by Elsie and Hermes. The 2 skeletons immediately attacked, and Grimmin slid down to help, but fell. John slid down too. Grimmin blunted his battle ax on the stone wall and dropped it, while John dropped his flail after also hitting the wall. After that John turned both of the skeletons, who spent several rounds trying to uselessly climb up the east wall of the pit, while James, John, and Grimmin tried fruitlessly to hit the skeletons, seeming to fling their weapons repeatedly into the corners of the pit. Eventually they managed to kill the skeletons. James decided, looking at the green-daubed keyhole, that it was larger than any of the keys they had found so far, and probably hooked up to some mechanism, rather than a lock for a door, and that whatever it might be, it was beyond his current skill.

They crawled back up out of the pit, and one of D.B.'s characters (I think it was John) tried to step around the corner to the north corridor, which tilted and dumped him back into the pit, for more damage. Next they explored the western end of corridor 3, where James set off the arrow trap, which luckily missed. They went in to the crawlspace in 5 with Grimmin in the lead and he killed the skeleton with ease! They came out of the crawlspace into 6, a long narrow room with 12 coffins. T.A.'s characters went to look at the 4 open coffins and were attacked by two ghouls and a skeleton from room 7. D.B.'s characters, more cautious, had stayed by the crawlspace, but moved up to help their comrades. Luckily, the ghouls attacked Arlow and Elsie, who as elves were able to ignore the paralyzing effects of the ghouls. The resulting fight destroyed the ghouls and the skeleton.

They decided to open one of the closed stone coffins, and while pushing the heavy lid off, Elsie, along with several others, fell into the coffin on top of the skeleton. The others managed to (eventually) exit the coffin, but poor Elsie was too entangled with the skeleton. Eventually the party killed the skeleton, but Elsie ended in the negative hit points [1], so they went back to Mad Sammy's with Elsie on a floating disk to recover.