Editing SGA 2007 Archive (section)

==Part 1==
: '''[[User:Mechante Anemone|Mechante Anemone]]:''' With five female players, the ladies had a majority and successfully voted in the name "The Five Swell Gals" for the party (after all, the Five Swell Guys weren't all guys.)   Yes, we did notice there were more than five of us -- how about the Seven Sentinels who were really nine?  Yeah, I read way too many Alan Moore comics. :)

: So the Five Swell Gals found the aforementioned pesant who had been badly beaten, and decided to take him to nearby Hommlet to get some care.  They soon learned that he was the only survivor of a party of fifteen villagers who had ventured up in the mountains to retrieve young Horace, a 12-year old boy who had been somehow lured to a little-known monastery.

: Apparently, Young Horace was a quiet boy, his widowed father's only child and support.  Old Horace (the father) was legless, and relied on his helpful son to get around and take care of his modest farm.  But a few weeks before, a two-headed calf had been born to one of their cows.  Young Horace took it to the local druid so that she would read the omen, but when she decreed that the calf must be sacrificed, the boy had refused and instead hidden the calf in the forest.  Then Young Horace had suddenly started developping an interest in the abbey in the mountains, declaring that he wanted to join the monastery.  Eventually, the boy had run away to the abbey.   His father was upset and when a group of villagers went to demand that he be returned, they discovered that the monks had hired a band of Orcs, the Twisted Tooth, as mercenaries to defend the monastery. 

: Old Horace and the villagers pleaded with the Five Swell Gals to help -- and the rumour that the monks were sitting on a huge treasure trove didn't hurt either.   Although a crabby Petunia complained that they should be doing a little more ground work first, the group charged up the mountain, with Longrinn and Mykk taking point.

: When they reached the monastery in the crags, they indedd found it defended by Orcs.  Sammy cast a spell to plunge the (previously damaged) gate area in darkness (Obscure).  Erin and Sianica climbed over the walls, Petunia burrowed under the foundations, and the rest swarmed through the broken gate.  

* An epic fight ensued, where some of the highlights included:
** Lyle the bard waded through the fray (using Mykk as cover) and took no damage, while Sammy scurried into a building to hide and was turned into a pincushion by archers.
** Lyle used her Fear spells (singing heavy metal) to rout large mobs of monks and Orcs.
** Longrinn the paladin had the worst luck with his dice, worse even that Aaron the ranger, and that takes a lot of effort.
** Martha the dog managed to horribly maul an Orc on her first attack (and then never rolled anything higher than a 2).
** Petunia burrowed under the Orc leader Hakka's feet and dragged him halfway into the ground as a "weasel attack."
** Ganging up on Hakka allowed the group to chip at him effectively.
** Speaking of effectiveness, Aaron (despite a series of disappointing rolls at one point) showed that he was just as effective with a bow as he was as the two-sword Cuisinart.
** Mykk was a tank, as expected, and bagged Hakka after many blows.
** Sianica was a true "death from above" ninja and also managed to claim credit on others' kills!
** Fat Bastard would rather stay in the middle and risk taking Mykk's "friendly fire" than miss a fight.
** Longrinn can take quantities of damage that would squish several of the other heroes, and barely notice -- which is good, 'cause he sure took a lot of blows.

: Eventually the Orcs were annihilated and Longrinn and Mykk brushed off the monks who were trying to bar the way to the treasure chamber.  An immense pile of gold was in the center of the large room; although Longrinn could feel serious evil vibes, they seemed to come from the room, not the gold. 

: Going gold-mad, Sammy threw herself face-first in the treasure, having gone to Gnome heaven.  Swimming in gold, she reached for a single coin -- and as soon as she grabbed it, the room started filling with blood.  Meanwhile, outside, Petunia found Young Horace in a cell.  Gleeful, the boy was shouting: "He comes!  The master comes!"  A gigantic, shapeless tentacled monster emerged from the gold.

: The monks wailed in despair.  Longrinn managed to extract an explanation from them: the Lord of Blood had long ago been imprisoned here and for 3,000 years, the abbey's monks had been keeping him/it imprisonned by making sacrifice of all earthly pleasures and riches, denying themselves every comfort.  But recent omens and a planetary alignment had allowed the Lord of Blood to contact a receptive victim and call to Young Horace.  The monks had hoped to keep the boy locked up and prevent him from aiding the Lord of Blood; because of his age, they could not bring themselves to hurt Horace.  But the first act of greed committed in the room had freed the Lord of Blood!

::<blockquote style="background:aliceblue; border:1px solid black; padding:1em"><B>johnzo:</B> Like [[SGA_2006_Archive#The_Voyage_of_the_Olympic|The Voyage of the Olympic]] I'd planned this to be another "Pottery Barn" game where in the first session, the PCs would be induced to break something, and in subsequent sessions, they would have to deal with the fallout of that breakage.  So I was very happy with the Lord of Blood's emergence in Session 1. </blockquote>