Unlike (most of) that journal, this one will not be in character, and will be at a much more summarized level, as that is the only way I will be able to keep it current. (I thought about doing another in-character journal, but that idea lasted only for as long as it took me to remember how much work the previous one had been, both in and out of game-time.) So it won't have the flavor of the other one, but hopefully it will still let interested readers know what is going on in Monte's game.
With the death of Ciris, and the departure of Enzo, (Tod, Enzo's player, took a break when his third child was born, and decided to play a different character when he came back), the party currently consists of:
Original characters still being played:
- Aesa, 9th-level human runeblade (a class from the Book of Experimental Might), played by Sue
- Ravenna, 9th-level human rogue, played by Sarah
- Ard, 9th-level human cleric of Fharlanghan, played by Kent
New characters as of the last session:
- Dirdge, a bugbear fighter/rogue (I am not sure of the exact level split between those two classes), played by Tod (formerly playing Enzo)
- Korlath Stonedelver, a 9th-level dwarven wizard, played by me (formerly playing Ciris)
Rules are a mix of 3.0, 3.5, and the Complete Book of Experimental Might, with whatever tweaks Monte comes up with (even those of us who have played for
decades can't count on what we think we know 
).
At the end of the prior game session, the party escaped from the Temple of the Passage in the Astral Plane (where (in the employ of a woman named Shotanilith)
they had gone to stop a dead githyanki female from being turned into a lich). In the course of the escape, the wizard Ciris had sacrificed himself by holding
off a red dragon long enough for the rest of the party to get away. Attempting to contact Ciris the next day via a sending spell (as the rest of the party had
last seen him alive but confronting the dragon), they got a response from Ciris, stating that he was still alive (the dragon having captured and tortured him
to extract information about Shotanilith), but that his execution was imminent (as he didn't really have much information that he could give them), and
that he was glad they had escaped. When they cast another sending spell the following day, they got no response, and it was clear that Ciris was dead.
They knew that the dragon was associated with a group called the Court of the Coil (an evil organization made up primarily of scaled creatures such as dragons,
naga, etc., with which the party had tangled in the past), and so when Shotanilith asked them to undertake an infiltration of a fortress controlled by the
Court (for the purpose of gathering information and causing some mayhem), the party had a new, more personal reason to agree (apart from the hefty fee promised
by Shotanilith). They were told to travel to the svirfneblin town of Nibut, where they would join a gnoll named Chale (whom they had travelled with before and
who was leading the mission) and a couple of additional mercenaries hired by Chale. The party returned to their ship, and sailed off to Nibut. And that is
where the session began.
