The lizard-king returns to its dark lair to die… a second time. (by Noir1992 and Sikari888, CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0)

In the final session of Thracia, we gamed for only about half an hour: after a lot of summer travel, we wanted to get together and move the game forward but we also wanted to just talk. One of the players needed to be in bed by 9 PM; our normal get-together time was 6:30, then eating and talking and drinking, then gaming. In this game we started at about 8:15.

I suggested that if they did what they planned to do—head out of the Lost City into the jungle—it would take about five minutes, and then they would have completed the adventure and I could give them their experience points.

I had rolled wandering monsters ahead of time for a few days, just in case, and there were none in the first sixteen hours.

So, they ran to the jungle, and then chose to go directly north¹. It was about mid-late evening when they started, and they went until just after dark before climbing one of the huge canopy trees to set camp. The tree idea was Eddie’s: it’s what saurians do to avoid night encounters. Of course, Eddie’s people eat spiders and other bugs that might live in trees…

After handing out experience points, Zah Eil achieved fifth level. He added his new level to Prophet, so that after this adventure he was a 2^nd level Warrior, 3^rd level Prophet. Riana reached sixth level, so she became a 6^th level Prophet. Among the spirit manifestations she gained access to were the ability to turn into a tree, and have discussions spanning sixty miles by way of plant life.

Eddie still had that three-injury loss of his tail. He’d healed two of it, but until it heals completely it still counts as a penalty of three. Eddie also had two injuries from the giant bats.

The lizard king was following Zah Eil, or, more specifically, the tablet of the arts, invisibly. It had a potion of fire resistance, as well as all of its spells except one teleportation, invisibility, and summon elemental. It had three injuries, and 24 survival remaining out of 57. In the future I did give them hints and the occasional perception roll in places where a giant invisible flying lizard following them might be noticed. But it was invisible, and it was flying.

Zah Eil still did not have a holy symbol, which limited the spirit manifestations he could use. But he could tell—feel—that there was a symbol of Ishtar for him to the East, along the direction of the Road.

This was not the end of their adventure in Thracia. When they reach the Ruined City, Zah Eil accidentally returned to the lizard king’s lair. In a fight with the lizard king on the outskirts of the long-dead ruins, he jumped on the lizard king’s back as the lizard king stole the tablet of faith and teleported, while dying, back to his lair. By then Zah Eil knew enough to use the teleport pads in the temple of Ishtar to return to the waking City.

But that, as the cliché tells us, is a tale for another time.