Mike Byrd (as the Evil Overlord) ran us through a third scenario from the second edition Descent game.
The game starts off with Ben being right about something. This is a bad omen.
Our adventure is to enter some caverns. Let’s call them the Caverns of Unending Death. We’re looking to save a farmer named Frederick and to kill the boss goblin named Splig. Hmm, how about Splig the Torturous Goblin of the Caverns. (Frederick will just be Frederick.)
We enter the Caverns of Unending Death and begin looking for Splig the Torturous Goblin of the Caverns. We’re keeping an eye out for Frederick. Instead of either of those we find a group of giant poisonous spiders. Right away the overlord charms me and forces me to attack Owen. (At least that’s what everyone believes.) The Overlord is not through though; he causes his minions to frenzy and attacks both Ben and I. He manages to only damage (and poison) me. Mike searches and finds a trap. He avoids it with ease. The Overlord spends the next 10 minutes playing cards against the poor, helpless heroes.
We kill the spiders and venture deeper into the Caverns of Unending Death. The next door we open reveals a band of barghests. They breathe on Owen, Ben, and I. Ben takes a fatigue. I take a fatigue plus a wound. Owen is untouched.
Splig the Torturous Goblin of the Caverns interrogates two of the four farmers he has captured. If one of them is Frederick, we’re in trouble. Fortunately Frederick wasn’t one of the poor unfortunate farmers chosen.
We raced to the room where the remaining two hostage farmers were being held. Owen is able to stun a whole hallway full of goblins and get to the hostage room first. The rest of us take on the remaining goblins and barghests. Mike smashes the goblin leader with one blow! We clear the cave of underlings. Only the boss is left.
We surround him and Mike the Goblin Killer finishes off Splig the Torturous Goblin of the Caverns.
Remember those spiders we fought at the beginning of the adventure? Ben took poison damage from the bite on every turn of the game.
The second Game:
After finishing the first game, we still had some time left, so Mike ran us through a quick game. Strangely the “quick†game’s map was twice as big as any map we’ve played through so far.
Our Quest: After already finding half of the shadow rune we must now escape the shadow vault. The shadow rune is kept in a casket carried by the dwarf (Mike). We mustn’t let the shadow rune fall into the hands of the evil Baron Zackareth. In this game we found our usual tactic of killing everything in our path doesn’t work so well.
As we move through the Shadow vault we’re almost immediately attacked by two ettins and Baron Zackareth himself. Mike kills one ettin. (I killed it once already, but we figured out that I took two turns in a row—because Mike told me to.) Owen casts a spell that makes everyone harder to hit including monsters. Still, the Baron wounds Mike. Ben rushes into help and does two wounds to the Baron. I don’t think the Baron even noticed since it takes 20 wounds to kill him. The Baron retaliates against Mike (not Ben) and does 14 wounds! Mike’s incapacitated and drops the casket containing the shadow rune. Ben will eventually pick the casket up, but not before running here and there, deciding to attack the Baron and then deciding not to. This all happens on a single “Ben†turn.
We revive Mike. He and I (heroically) try to block the Baron’s advance while Ben and Owen escape with the shadow rune. We continue on like this for a while. We run into, and killed, a gaggle of goblin archers. (A group of goblins is called a gaggle.)
At this point my notes are a little unclear. I’ve punished those responsible, sending them on a two week journey to India.
Fearing most of us will never make the required skill check to cross a stream—this would leave us forever stranded in the stream—we take the long way around it. The Baron however, swims it with no trouble and is now ahead of us.
We run into a bunch of zombies and ettins. We kill them in a tense battle that only heroes of our stature could survive.
Ben continues to take poison damage every turn. I think this is from a trap he sprung way back at the beginning of the adventure—a trap I forgot to mention. Ben and poison doesn’t mix well. We learned that in the first game.
I should mention the waterfall. There was a waterfall. We took damage going over it. The Baron did not.
Soon, it’s just us and the Baron. Ben wants to stay and fight the Baron. We’re tempted to let him (while we escape.) Instead we all make a mad dash for the exit.
We make it out!
Oh, I should mention the key. We found a key right away in the shadow vault. We thought it might be the key we needed to exit the vault. Turns out it wasn’t needed at all. It actually went to a door we never needed to go through. We sold the key to a band of gypsies.
Chaos steve