20th Day of Reaping, 580 CY - The party investigates the Temple Ruins in Highport

This week, as freed men, the party (who have decided that without Sir Gerard, they will just be called the Badass Motherfuckers, for reasons. . .) had two basic choices. Return to Greyhawk as originally planned, even though it's been more than a year since they departed for the Well of All Heals, or be the badasses that they know they are, and take vengeance on the Slave Lords. Okay, it wasn't really a choice. The party was pretty emotionally invested at this point, and definitely decided they were going to be the ones to end the rule of the Slave Lords once and for all. For Sarril, who was born into slavery, and Pontus, who had spent more time than he cared to rowing a boat for cruel masters, this was personal. For everyone else, it was a matter of principal. And so, after visiting an herbalist to stock up on what spell components they could, the Badass Motherfuckers headed to the Highport temple ruins just outside of town.

The party decided to wait until nightfall, then have Sarril's familiar, Krek, along with Cadwin in bat form, fly over the temple and to scout. They discovered that, in addition to the main gated entrance, there was another set of doors along the side, as well as two courtyards (a garden and a cemetery). After some brief planning, they decided to have Luapan levitate them over the wall and into the cemetery. Cadwin, ever in-tune with nature, sensed something was wrong. They party soon discovered that gloomy trees and bushes had a mind of their own, and began twisted, turning and growing to block the party's path in every direction they went. Cadwin's attempts to use his druid magic to manipulate the vegetation failed, leading the party to believe something was in control and it likely was coming from the crypt in the center of the cemetery. And so they hacked their way through to the doors and broke them down, finding a stairwell leading down into the darkness.

The end of the stairwell led to a narrow dirt tunnel that lead in a couple of directions. After the tunnel became impassable in one direction, the party turned around and headed the other way, where they came into contact with three insect men (Aspis) dual-wielding halberds with their four arms. Jarrus, ever the fighting beast, was able to easily dispatch these, but not before they screeched an alarm to alert the others. Pushing forward down the tunnel, with Pontus in the lead, they came into a larger cavern where four more of the creatures were waiting, along with several giant ants. As Pontus pushed forward into the room, he set off a trap that caught him in a sticky net, reducing his ability to fight and getting him further caught the more he tried to swing his sword. The narrow tunnel was making it impossible for everyone to get to the front, so Jarrus and Pontus switched places so Jarrus could take care of the Aspis. Unfortunately, Jarrus was taking a lot of damage, and quickly. Although the party now has three healers (two clerics and a druid), they could not get to Jarrus as giant ants emerged from a side tunnel, cutting them off from the rest of the party. Jarrus soon when down.

Not our party - but you get the idea

Seeing Jarrus drop from negative hit points, and the Aspis warriors about to chop his body into pieces, Pontus heroically jumped in-between Jarrus and his enemies, exposing his back to the creatures who landed multiple halberd blows that reduced even the barbarian's substantial hit points to near zero. With four more aspis coming to the fight (these wielding dual broadswords and dual shields), things were looking grim. Still caught up in the sticky net, Pontus wrapped his arms around

Our house rules state that if a character is knocked unconscious from zero or less hit points, but not killed, they need to recover half of their hit point total before they can be functional again. Jarrus is the party's "glass cannon." He deals a lot of offensive damage, but has relatively low hit points for a fighter (he is the exact opposite of Pontus - so they have learned to operate as a pair). The good news in this case is that it doesn't take a lot of healing to get Jarrus back in action, which happened in short order.
Jarrus, who was also now stuck to him, and dived back into the tunnel to the ground, protecting his brother in arms while Sarril stepped up and cast Boccob's Rolling Thunder to blast away the remaining Aspis in the room. He didn't killed them, but he severely wounded all of them, and stunned a few, buying the party a couple of rounds. In the meantime, Cadwin cast a hold on one of the giant ants and Luapan absorbed an attack to push past the ant and start healing Jarrus.

The party then worked on cutting Pontus and Jarrus free of the net, and decided to have Pontus keep the ants from the side tunnel at bay while Jarrus goes toe-to-toe with the Aspis warriors, backed by healers behind him. The strategy worked, and soon they cleared the room.

Being that there was nothing of obvious interest in the room, and the party was wounded and out of spells, they decided to retreat for the day. Unfortunately, there was no safe place to go. They finally decided to "make camp" on the landing of the stairs, half-way up to the crypt. For the rest of the evening, the party had to constantly fight giant ants coming up from below, and a wave after wave of ghouls coming down from above. The exit was completely blocked by thick vines, which seemed to move aside to let the ghouls through. Fortunately, neither the ants nor the ghouls were much of a match for Jarrus, who decided he would not sleep and would just stay up to protect the party (he is a half-elf, so needs less sleep than humans anyway). This strategy worked to give the party a rest and recover spells, then it was off to races again. . .

The party decided to go a different direction this time, and followed another tunnel path north until they came to an opening into a room down below. The large room contained a circular moat, where ten orcs with crossbows stood at the ready, below them was a man in leather armor, surrounded by several giant weasels. This certainly looked interesting, and it was time to stop for the day. It was late afternoon on the 21st day of Reaping, 580 CY.