The second rule of being a Dungeon Master

People will die.

So last night we had our second session, and before our characters had even moved from their campsite, we had had a death. Amata, the Crystalboy, decided he had a better character in mind, and could he not be the shardmind anymore, please?

Sure.

So, having mysteriously died in the night due to a fright from the still twitching corpse of the rat-man, our adventurers briefly mourned the unexpected demise of Amata and promptly stole all his items.

After bumbling about the temple grounds for a while, the paladin had a vision from his patron deity of steamy hot springs. There were hot springs on their map, why not go there next? So they did, and were joined by a giant barbarian named Lowkeg. Oh boy. Lowkeg AND Kegslow? This will be fun.

While at the hot springs, our adventurers discovered that the slaying stone, the object of their quest, was in the possession of a young and petulant brass dragon. They were unable to convince her to give the stone over, as it was obviously an object of dark power and could be used against her, so she assured them of her ability to easily kill all of them and dismissed them from her hotspring.

What now?

Well, our paladin once again sought guidance in the form of prayer, and in return, received a vision of a mug of ale. In response, he set off for the ruined tavern, the travelers following only reluctantly, for perhaps our dwarf was only claiming that it was truly divine guidance pushing him towards a chance of ale.

Once at the tavern, our adventurers were met with the sounds of drunken singing. There was a nasty looking female orc inside, quite intoxicated, who our adventurers managed to convince to go back to the hot springs with some of her orc buddies, as they too were looking for the slaying stone. She waddled off, leaving the party free to explore the tavern, where of course they found nothing, other than a strange circle of blue runes on the floor.

Piers the wizard, after a bit of examination, recognized it as the back end of a teleportation portal. Wow, really blogger? You think teleportation is not a word? Take that stupid red line away, now!  With a great deal of effort, our heroes managed to chip away at the runes, thus damaging the circle and preventing anymore whatsahoosits from coming through. 

Our adventurers then made their way back to the hot springs, where they discovered that the young dragon had been killed by a band of 40 or so orcs. Luckily for our adventurers, about 32 of those orcs were dead now, killing by the raging dragon, and our adventurers only had to deal with the remaining eight orcs, who had the stone in their possession.

This proved to be one of the most difficult things to watch I have ever seen. Kegslow, the paladin, died more than once, but managed to save out of it every time. In fact, everyone died at least once. I really thought it was going to be a wipe. In the end though, our adventurers managed to defeat the orcs, with just the paladin left standing, and then, after slowing rising to their feet, our heroes discovered that Lowkeg, the giant, had fallen in battle and could not be revived. He had really and truly died. This was two characters now who had died, both owned by the same person.

After wearily collecting the stone and deciding to destroy it rather than give it back to the woman Treona, The woman was, needless to say, a little ticked off at their blatant non-compliance with her request, but she got over it and shoved them out of her tower, throwing a bag of money after them.

Level up! Hooray, with the completion of the quest, our characters ( the surviving ones, anyways) advanced to level two, and while reveling in their success, they met up with Meebo, the halfling sorceror. This was our unlucky player's third character, and everyone seemed to enjoy him. Hopefully he will stick around.

They journeyed together to the town of Winterhaven, where they restocked and rested, and where Kegslow decided to sell off all the brass scales they had collected from the dead dragon and use them to make a suit of wyrmscale armor. Lana was glad to have her bag of holding empty again. Piers, on the other hand, sold off all the interesting books and scrolls he had collected in the ruined library back in Kiris Dahn, and attempted to buy a better staff, but still lacked the gp, so he moped a bit, but got over it.

After asking around in town, the innkeeper informed them that the lord of the city, Padraig, was looking for adventurers to deal with a kobold problem. So, they set off along the road after meeting with Padraig, in search of the problematic kobolds. They dealt with the ones along the road with no trouble, and followed their tracks back towards their lair, where they fought a whole bunch of kobolds, mostly minions.

This fight would have been much more difficult if I, the DM, hadn't been so sleepy at this point and had remembered that the ten minions should have been attacking the whole time instead of just standing there. I didn't realize that they hadn't been attacking until there were only two minions left. Oh well. Our adventurers had just had a horribly difficult experience with the previous battle with the orcs, why not throw a couple easy fights at them, with stupid minions who don't know how to fight?

Anyways, with the defeat of the kobolds outstide the lair, our session came to an end and we look forward to the next session, when our adventurers will enter the kobold lair and discover what or who is behind the attacks on travelers to Winterhaven.