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...And that's why I'm increasing the bad guys' levels/loot and adding more peons.

We finally kicked off the adventure Sunday night. I hooked them into going to Hommlet to deliver the sad news of a merchant's death (and his last will) to his mother, brewmaster Thaeni Sevensong. One of the PCs also - coincidentally *ahem* - has an uncle in Hommlet (the woodcutter, whose name escapes me at the moment).

Sunday night's session actually began with everyone finishing their leveling-up and divvying up treasure from the previous adventure. We got a late start anyway (life gets in the way), and I realized that I was gonna have to move things along fast if they were going to swing a sword at all that night. With that in mind, I glossed over the entire 22-day journey from the dwarven kingdom of Shieldgaard to Hommlet. I could have (and maybe should have) hit them with some encounters on the way, but my goal for the evening was for them to find the moathouse and face off against Big U as the night's big finale...

The PCs arrived in Hommlet and went straight to the brewery. Thaeni Sevensong (voiced as Marge Gunderson from Fargo) took the news as well as could be expected, and thanked them for bringing her the news. Billie went to visit her uncle and aunt (whose names I still can't recall, but they were voiced as Red Green and Harold from the Red Green Show) for a nice little surprise visit; I'm gonna have to build on that relationship so I can use them against her later.

The PCs then checked into the Welcome Wench, meeting Vesta and her slightly senile father. (Vesta = Kathy Bates, Dad = the old gnome scholar from the Neverending Story "Try the venison stew! It's our spesh-ee-ality!") During that evening's meal they also met Maridosen (Christina Ricci) and Elmo (Hudson Hawk), and I did use Dormain's great Elmo vs. Calmer (Chevy Chase in Vacation) and Y'Dey (Maggie Smith) argument while the PCs sat in awkward witness. Of course, the PCs volunteered to scope out the moathouse in the morning, and they were referred to Spugnoir and Jaroo for more info about the moathouse. Y'dey also gave the generic, locally-well-known history of the ToEE.

The next morning they hit Spugnoir's shop first, and met Renne (Lola from Disney Channel's Charlie & Lola) and the surly dwarven guard Thoon Blackaxe (surly dwarven guard). At this point Betty apparently decided that she speaks with an outrageous cockney accent (while talking to Renne/Lola), and her player stuck with the accent for the rest of the night. We'll see if that lasts. Renne informed the group that Spugnoir hasn't been home in three days, and Betty promised Renne that we'd do everything we could to find her daddy. We headed for Jaroo's grove.

Jaroo (Hugo Weaving) was polite but surprisingly unhelpful. It was already nearing 10PM, our usual quitting time, so I rushed through this encounter. I'll try to build on the Jaroo/Yundi thing later if possible. It was time to head for the moathouse.

On the way, they bumped into Ol' Del (old redneck coot), who confirmed the recent activities at the moathouse - robed people and gnolls - and told them about the blue dragon he'd seen.

The PCs proceeded with caution, but when they wiped out a pair of giant frogs without taking a scratch themselves, they grew cocky. They waltzed right into the courtyard, picked up the dagger, and marched right through the front door! Astoundingly, they didn't do ANY preparation, and were freaked right out when I slapped a dragon down on the table. After the game ended, one player commented that they all expected the dragon to be the LAST encounter of the dungeon, so they were completely caught off-guard when they bumped into it right away. Due to the group's size (eight players and two animal companions), I increased Big U to a Juvenile dragon (CR8 Large dragon), and I knew this would be a tough fight.

They handled themselves pretty well, all things considered. I did get in a good initial shot with the breath weapon, catching half the party in a line with only a 5-foot-step on the dragon's part and dropping the cleric to the ground at -7 hit points. One of the barbarians broke off from melee to dump a healing potion down her throat (he was down to 1 hit point himself, so he wasn't just being altruistic). Betty the Evoker pumped every scorching ray in her arsenal into Big U, while Billie sliced and diced with her greatsword. Xian the ranger sent his brand-new animal companion (horse) into the thick of the fight while he stood back and fired arrows ineffectively. (The horse died messily and quickly.) Izzy the druid didn't do much in the fight, though her wolf companion provided a +2 flanking bonus for those with big swords. The cleric Mei Ling - after getting up off the ground - spent the entire fight healing everyone else, and Kitty the rogue may have scored a single hit. Maybe.

I think Betty the Evoker actually dealt the most damage to the dragon, hitting with all four of her scorching ray spells for 4d6 damage each, so she was the target of Big U's second - and last - breath. Just after hammering the wizard with lighning, putting her at -8 hit points (and also turning the ranger's horse into a french-fried fritter), the dragon took simultaneous AoO greatsword hits - one was a crit - when it tried to move, and the mighty Utreshimon was defeated.

At this point it was after 11PM and several of us (including me) had to get up for work the next morning, so we called it a night. We'll mop up and loot the room next time. Actually, we unfortunately had to literally mop up late in the evening when a player spilled her drink on my hand-drawn moathouse battlemap...

All things considered, I'm very happy with the way things started out. Several players were dragged into role-playing their characters a bit more, and even though there was a glut of background information in a very short time, all the players seemed to be following along well. I'm mostly satisfied with my DMing performance, though looking back I did make one glaring error. I fudged the dragon-breath dice roll against the wizard; on 8d8 I actually rolled about 50 points damage, which should have killed her outright. In hindsight, I should have let her die; the party made a pretty big mistake by ignoring the spoon-fed warning from Ol' Del about the dragon. Ah well. I've already discussed it with the wizard's player and told him that he got a freebie; I'm officially done pulling punches on them.

I'm ready to play another session right now, but we're all stuck waiting. We play three Sundays out of the month - one of the players has to work - and this is his weekend on duty, dagnabbit. At least I'll have plenty of time to paint minis for upcoming sessions...

Oh, and did I mention that we're actually bringing in ANOTHER player?! Sheesh!!

We had another good session on Sunday. We had an additional player in the mix (bringing us to nine players!) and I decided his dwarven fighter'd be a perfect companion for Spugnoir.

The PCs finished off the rest of the ground floor quickly, and thanks to a nat 20 Search check by the rogue they also found the secret staircase. They still chose to take the main stairs down though, and got ambushed by the gnolls in the first chamber. One of the players used a wee bit o' metagame knowledge to entice the new guy to join the fight, calling out to Torm loudly. It worked. Spugnoir and the dwarf leapt out to assist. After mopping up pretty easily, the PCs were happy to find out the identity and backstory of their helpers:

The two of them were ambushed and badly wounded by the cultists in the dungeon, which turned into a mad dash for the exit with gnolls snapping at their heels. All seemed lost when they turned the corner at the top of the stairs and found Master Thaque and the female rogue in black waiting for them... and then the dragon attacked. The rogue died immediately from a surprise bolt of lightning, and Thaque turned just in time to raise a hand in a futile gesture of warding as the dragon chomped him. The adventurering duo found themselves actually pushed out of the way by gnolls fleeing back down the stairs, and the two could only follow the gnolls as the dragon roared a challenge their way. Spugnoir directed them into the storeroom and barred the door, and there they sat until they heard a voice calling out to Torm the True amid the sounds of battle three days later...

I patterned Spugnoir after Charlie Sheen, and he's decided that one of the female PCs is downright yummy. (The player isn't very role-playing inclined, and I'm trying like hell to draw her out of her shell, with only so-so success thus far.) The party decided to head back to town; I had a brief panicked moment where I wondered what the bad guys'd do with the dragon gone, then I realized that they didn't have to do anything; it'd be easy enough to simply say that they're not actually finished with their work down below, so I figured I'd go ahead and play it out as written.)

While in town, one of the newbie players took the initiative to ask Y'dey about the EEE unholy symbol they'd found (kudos to him for getting into character), and the players are now starting to get a glimpse of the bigger picture. The dwarf asked to join the party in their quest to stop the cult, and in the interest of forward progress we fast-forwarded through that debate. The party headed back to the moathouse.

When they returned to the moathouse, I opted to just have a few gnolls keeping watch in the upper ruins; they retreated below to warn everyone when they saw the size of the group coming their way. The PCs chose to take the secret stairs though, and rather unintentionally avoided the bigger fight... for now. They easily found both secret doors at the bottom of the stairs, and someone heard Gren yelling at a clumsy gnoll. They charged in and won a rather bloody fight (made all the more difficult when the skeletons joined in).

Due to time constraints, we had to call it a night as the last gnoll fell - the players know what was lying on the white sheet, but haven't investigated any of it yet.

Aside note: I've got a couple of really nice Reaper inquisitor figures painted up to use as the assassins in the Outer Fane (whose names escape me at the moment), and they both wear masks. My plan is to create a secret sect of monk-ish assassins dedicated to Big T (they're the ones who wear the lilac stone masks), and the dead rogue in Big U's lair was a mask-wearing member of this sect. I intend for the sect to become a recurring villain for the PCs over the course of the campaign.

I've also got three of Reaper's Devourers of Mashaf painted up that I'll be using for my grells. They're Large now, sure, but otherwise I'll leave the stats alone. They just look so much more freakishly hideous than your run-of-the-mill grell...

Right now Garrik and the rest of the gnolls are somewhere between the PCs and the front stairs; that could turn into a really bloody mess very quickly, though I fully expect the PCs to come out on top in that fight.

Ysslansh and Geynor Ton will remain in the room at the top of the cyst - they're frantically trying to finish their work so they can get the hell out of the moathouse, but I think a bunch of meddling kids are gonna interrupt their plans...

I just realized that I haven't provided a list of the pertinent players. I think I should remedy that:

• Mei Ling Whitelocke, female human cleric of Torm: Aside from the fact that she's got a twin sister named Celeste (from a now-defunct previous campaign), she doesn't have a background yet. The player's working on it and I should have it soon. I intend for Bad Things to happen to this sister…
• Gulg, male half-orc barbarian: The bastard son of an orc raider and one of his human victims, Gulg was raised by his mother's barbarian tribe at Eagle's Nest. His uncle taught him to the tribe's ways and how to fight. Gulg and his mother were both captured by Zhentarim slavers, and Eagle's Nest was burned to the ground. Gulg believes his mother is dead (she's not, but I want to surprise him with that revelation). Gulg was sold in the slave markets of Waterdeep to a half-orc mercenary, who was killed in the huge cave-in that kicked off the campaign. Gulg was able to remove his collar and he swiped his owner's weapons/armor. He has hidden the fact that he's an ex-slave from the rest of the group.
• Betty Juggs, female human specialist wizard (evoker): Betty grew up in the pirate haven of Mintarn. She wasn't able to find any ships that would take her on as a sailor, but she discovered an aptitude for magic and apprenticed to an aged evoker named Tolin. The player was nice enough to leave Tolin's fate up to me - alive, dead, or lich, he didn't care - but Betty left his service when she learned that her father had vanished (again, up to me to determine daddy's fate). She heard a rumor that her father had left the Sword Coast and begun pirating on the Inner Sea. She signed on with the first ship that would take her as its crew wizard, but the ill-fated ship was attacked by the Waterdhavian navy. Having never been in a true battle, Betty panicked. The only thing she managed to do was to attempt to revive a fallen sailor (unsuccessfully) before blacking out. She awoke to discover that the pirates had all been slaughtered, and the Waterdhavian ship's crew had assumed she was actually a captive of the pirates. They set her free in Waterdeep. While on her way to the Inner Sea pirate haven of Freeport, she was caught in the earthquake/cave-in…
• Izzy Baenre, female half-drow druid: Her animal companion is a wolf named Scotty. I don't have a background for Izzy yet, but with that last name I'm really looking forward to this one.
• Xian Windwalker, male half-elven ranger: No backstory yet, except that he's (maybe) got a father with the same name (from the same defunct campaign as Mei Ling's sister).
• Billie Badass, female human fighter: No backstory yet, except that she's the niece of Hommlet's woodcutter. And Spugnoir has taken a liking to her.
• Amezerak Blackaxe, male dwarven fighter: The brother of Thoon Blackaxe (resident shop security specialist for Spugnoir), and late-comer to the group. He and Spugnoir spent three days trapped in the moathouse together - what happens in the moathouse stays in the moathouse. ;-) Aside from that, no backstory yet.
• Cordio Stormshadow, male dwarven barbarian: No backstory yet.
• Kitty Storm, female human rogue: No backstory yet.

So that's what I'm working with - the players who don't have character backstories yet are working on them, and I should receive 'em soon.

I fully intend to do Very Bad Things to the PCs' loved ones (in the grand tradition of Infinitus).