Summervale. The village is rather small. A few farms, a few shops - not sure there's even 100 people living there.

Everything in the village has been razed. Mary buildings are burned sometimes by fire, sometimes by acid - the other buildings have been trampled. Bodies everywhere - burnt, frozen, torn apart.

Nobody, it seems, survived what had happened here.

Near the edge of the village lied the corpse of a gigantic creature. An elderly man was looking at the corpse at various angles, looking rather puzzled.

The heroes quickly joined the old man.

"You too, young woman, are intrigued by the presence of irregular creatures?", he asked Marisol.

Marisol was very suspicious of the old man's presence. Nevertheless, they both examined the creature's corpse at their feet.

The old man, who presented himself as Eldak Serpenthelm (I know my last name sounds villainous, but I did not choose it) identified the creature as being a mixture of a dragon's head, a giant's torso and the lower part being reminiscent of a lion. Definitely not the creature that escaped our heroes.

I had a kinda-skill-challenge based scenario here where the players could examine the remains and find clues and theorize among themselves about what was happening.

It turned out that I mostly role played with Marisol while most of the other players were either falling asleep or talking about something else. I failed to notice this at the time and probe whether this part should be kept for next session.

I felt that the analysis of the corpse was cool for me - medieval CSI typed - and it made sense too! I had fun with that... but I think my "Grissom" was too clever for his own good and he solved most of the puzzle for himself.

Arkanys, feeling that the old man knew more than he let on, tried to frazzle him with death threats.

The old man was not impressed and started a small philosophical argument - which Arkanys fled in order to help save a child stuck under some rubble.

During the exchange, Marisol notice that the old man and Morrigane were secretly exchanging glances - as if they knew one another.

They went on to try and gather some information from the child. The child was ordered to hide under the bed as soon as the creature attacked the village. He heard screams and destruction for a while, then he heard a second creature come in and fight the first creature - their fight is what destroyed the whole town.

This is where I started noticing that I was loosing players. I cut short on the kid interrogation and just had him plain give them the info.

Arkanys notice that Eldak was listening on the conversation.

He immediately threatened to end the old man's life if he didn`t tell him why he was listening in.

"Well, I'm trying to understand what has happened here, what do you think? Why are you here? What are you always so eager to end a man's life, young Shadar Kai?"

"Life is meaningless, old man. Only death has meaning."

"Ah. So young... so foolish, still! Did you not yet figure out that it is the measure of a man's life that brings meaning to his death? How can you worship death and have no respect for life?"

One of my favorite interaction of the whole game session.

At this point, I would have expected my players to discuss about the clues and come up with some theories much cooler than what I came up with.

But with only two players actually role playing, and a few others nearly sleeping, that didn't happen.

Annoyed by the old man's presence and the obvious fact that he knew more than he let on, the players went to confront Morrigane. She too, seemed to know more.

Morrigane did not really resist Marisol. She rapidly revealed that she and Eldak were both members of a secret society - the Valaistu.

Durign the game session, the organization had no name. I just came up with it.

The Valaistu are monitoring the appearance of strange creatures around the world in an attempt to find and stop their creators.

According to their sources, some organizations are working towards the creation of gigantic creatures and wreak havoc ever 100 or so years. Every time the cycle starts, enormous creatures fight one another around cities, causing enormous destruction and death.

The caravan is actually a front operation to try and spot potential recruits. While the heroes have not yet proven themselves, the Valaistu still requires their help - the creature fights have started ahead of schedule and they have not yet gathered enough information.

Eldak soon joined them.

"I cannot gather much information here - the creature from the Kobold's lair won the fight. From what your party has told us from the Keep and what I could see from the remains, both creatures seemed to be from the same creator... I suspect he wanted to keep only the strongest one."

"We need to go to the Oracle", said Morrigane.

"An Oracle is too unreliable-"

"It worked for Adelinde - these adventurers proved that much. It is settled then. We are heading towards Spellgard...

Adventurers - we would like you to join the Valaistu. At the very least, we would like to hire you to try and gather information from the Oracle of Spellgard. Will you join us? Will you come with us?"

That was my clever way of biding all the previous adventures into one cohesive whole. Arkanys figured out part of it during the investigation.

But, I had failed at emotionally connecting my worn-out players to the quest.

They agreed to follow - but not to join the order. But looking back on the session and comparing it with my notes, it feels like I've railroaded this show something fierce.

I don't know if I should help my players find a motivation to help out... this feels just like some more railroading.

Actually, I need to find out more about my players and their backgrounds - help them find their own motivations for adventuring... and weave some of that into my campaign.

I also need to find some cohesion within my group - for there aren't really any reasons for them to stick together.

What I plan to do is have a little role playing session by email, where I will poke at their (potentially secret) motivations to go see the Oracle.

I think I should see if we can cut back a bit on the goofing off. I have nothing against goofing off, but I feel the role playing part of the game would have been much more enjoyable if there had been less distractions.

My players seemed to have enjoyed the game and so did I at first... but I am left with a feeling that this game session - which I tried to tailor to please my role players - ended up pleasing only myself

Or maybe its the introspective eye of the DM that is never "good enough" speaking.

The PCs are now all level 2. Most of them have received a magic weapon. Next session, should my players decide to actually go there, should mark the actual beginning to the Spellgard scenario.

The amazing Medieval CSI picture is (c) AnimaFantsy.com which, sadly, is a dead link.

Every-two-weeks-Friday-night games are gone in favor of weekend-game-whenever-we-can-make-it-fit-night game. We met up early, had supper. Theoretically discharged social energies, sent the kids to bed and got ready to play. More on that later on.

After their encounter with the group of kruthiks and zombies, the "heroes" rested up and... nearly decided to go back to the caravan and let the husband's corpse rest wherever it may be.

A few of them argued that they should go back in the hole and solve this puzzle.

This is one of the problem I struggle with regarding the party at this point - they basically have no motivation to adventure. I have failed to pull it out of them and the core role-player of the group is playing a sociopath... which can be intimidating to the budding role-players. I love the sociopath PC, but we need to find a way to rein him in a little - to make him somewhat fit with the party... even if its a bit against his will. More on player/PC motivation to come...

Lord Adelinde's note book contained cryptic notes leading to the location the heroes were already in. A few scribbled maps made them believe that they were near the adventurer's quarry: Aararlo tomb.

Note to self: create names that you can pronounce... or at the very least, practice it a few times around.

According to the notes Aarlarlo was a legendary gnoll warrior that has been buried here with his treasures and a few servants. Lord Adelinde was persuaded that a valuable artifact was hidden here - though he did not write what it was.

The heroes decided to risk the adventure - perhaps the treasure would be worth it.

Rolen and Arkanys devised a plan where they would cover themselves in kruthik blood and carry body parts - the smell of the defeated kruthiks might help in fending off any remaining members of the horde. Kruthiks are in there for the food - if the prey is too strong, they'll keep their energies for easier prey.

It did not take them long to stumble into a cave filled will young kruthiks, feeding on corpses at various stages of decomposition.

The critters rapidly sense the incoming footsteps... as well as the blood of their fallen elders. They fled the room in haste through various crevices in the walls, a flurry of wild clicks filling the air.

What they left behind is some kind of crude burial room. One gigantic coffin sounded by a few smaller ones. On the wall above the giant coffin hung a dream catcher.

A giant gnoll zombie - roughly twice the size of a regular human - stood among the corpses, surrounded by a batch of smaller zombies. It held a bastard sword in one hand and his eyes were aglow with hatred - something the heroes are not used to see on a zombies.

Following another one of Phil's advise to change the flavor of the encounter, I used a solo monster instead of a group of monsters. I knew the fight was going to be easier than the first one. I wanted to give it a different feel to try and satisfy the more story-oriented players of the group.

Sensing something was odd with the dream catcher device, Arkanys quickly teleported in front of it and seized it. Something was afoul indeed: the device, usually used to keep evil spirits out, was actually rigged to keep evil spirits in! Over the years, the evil spiritual energy in the room was dense enough to raise the entombed into the horrors standing before the heroes.

While Arkanys was working the tribal macrame, the rest of the crew started to work on the zombies.

In no time - in great part due to Dali's magical prowess and the power of Iris' faith - only Aararlo and a corruption corpse were left standing.

Arkanys then slashed at the dream catcher - releasing a wave of radiant energy, burning at the remaining undead. The corruption corpse at his side was thrown 25 feet away from him - giving the Shadar Kai enough time to ready his blade and prepare his vengeance.

Followin up on some good advice from my friendly neighborhood ChattyDM, I made the room's interactive element more interesting than the player's regular powers. In this case, breaking the dream catcher did a level 5 turn undead - enough to get rid of the minions, seriously injuring the artillery and possibly hurting the solo monster.

Sadly, so to speak, the party managed to get rid of all the minions before Arkanys got to the dream catcher. Nevertheless, I feel the prop worked, even though it was less cool than I wanted it to be.

Aararlo, however was unfazed and used his necrotic tendrils to latch onto Marisol, crushing her in his deathly grip.

While Benerra, the death-dealing rogue was embedding dagger after dagger in the monster's forehead from afar, Rolen shot at the abomination's tentacles in hopes of helping Marisol free herself.

Arkanys made short work of the corruption corpse and turned around just in time to see the abomination fall from one well-placed arrow go straight through Aarlarlo's walking corpse.

The giant rotter fell to the ground... only to rise back up a few seconds later.

He was left alone and we usually take the creature pieces off the board as soon as they are dead... so I basically raised him right after he fell.

In retrospect, I should have left them remove the piece from the board and just put it back in later - I wasted a good suspense moment which might have made the encounter something special.

With the might of the six heroes combined together, Aararlo was quickly put to the ground and dismembered.

Searching the room and the corpse, they noticed that what first seemed to be the dream catcher's frame was actually a crude bow.

Rolen quickly established that it was Aararlo's bow - a crude-yet-effective weapon that could cause terrible bleeding to its target.

The also found a healing potion and a nice cache of gold pieces, as well as a ring worn by one of the lesser zombies.

Dali noticed that the ring matched Lady Adelinde's ring and the corpse was most likely her husband's - the body which they were to bring back for last rites.

Deciding that they would not want to carry the damned thing - even less than subject the widow to the sight of a zombified and horribly mutilated body, the heroes decided to give it its last rites on site and keep the ring as proof of their deeds.

The fight was way more easy than I wanted to. The main reason being that this is the first time I ever used solo / elite monsters. Aararlo actually had 2 action points to use and he used none! He could've done some serious damage and at least threaten the group. Raising him at a more climactic moment would have been great as well.

Nevertheless, I had handled this well. The fight lasted about one hour of game time. While I had no other combat encounter prepared, I had a pretty cool role playing scene that would tie in mostly everything and should send the heroes packing towards the Oracle of Spellgard.

Next post will tackle part one of the more role-playing-oriented part of this session.

Zombie Gnoll, (c) Wizard of the Coast