Darkness below, tyrannosaurus rex in the light. Which way to go? (Motacilla, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

When Owen returned from scouting the lair of the Enkian priests, he waxed rhapsodic to the others about treasure chests in a back room, but emphasized that getting to them meant going through nine Enkian guards. The others—especially Majelica—wanted to escape the underground; but no one had ideas on how to get past the tyrannosaur.

The stairs flipped back to stairs rather than a slide, but that just made it easier for them to be eaten by a dinosaur.

They hatched a plan to get through the five visible guards: the two on the other side of the bridge, and the three around the corner of the intersection twenty or so feet beyond the end of the bridge. The plan called for Owen to sleep the two at the bridge; Owen, Majelica, Alvin, and Eddie would then rush across; Alvin and Eddie would start tying the guards up, and Owen and Majelica would sleep the three guards beyond the intersection—those guards didn’t yet know that the party was aware of them.

Alvin pre-cut some rope to have it ready to tie everyone up.

To fill out your scorecard, the two guards are Daneil and Marmin, and the three plate-mailed guards around the intersection are Beilgar, Beilshar, and Bahrein.

The four that show up in round four, that Owen did not account for in his plan, are Shalm, Barirpal, Tirar, and Kordok.

Owen focused a sleep spell on the two guards, such that they had a penalty of 3 to their reactions. This meant that they only saved on a one or a two; and Daneil made his save with a 1. Since they were expecting some sort of attack (though with spears rather than magic, since they’re not familiar with it), Daneil attacked back, recognizing Owen as the source (Daneil and Marmin are prophets, after all). Daneil used a weather spirit to cast foul air around Owen, and it stuck. Owen had two rounds of activity before he was going to run completely out of breath.

Daneil blew a whistle; no one heard anything. But the three plate-mailed guards at the intersection came around.

Round 1:

Alvin charged across the bridge, going into a combat frenzy, which allowed him to cross the entire bridge in time to attack Beilgar this round. Majelica cast mage bolt, two arrows each to Beilshar and Nahreen. Owen tried to use the tripudio wand¹ on Daneil, but nothing happened. One of the warriors threw a spear at Alvin, and one at Majelica. Majelica was hit.

Round 2:

Alvin dropped Beilgar. Owen made his health roll, so wasn’t injured yet; he’ll need to make another reaction on round 8.

Round 3:

Alvin dropped Beilshar. Daneil tried to run, but Majelica mage bolted him, and he fell.

Round 4:

Nahreen fell to the ground; Alvin attacked him, and did not notice the four warriors coming around the corner. All four of them threw spears at Alvin, three of them hit. Zah Eil started crossing the bridge.

Round 5:

Riana cast foxfire on the four new guards. Alvin dropped Nahreen before Nahreen got back up. Zah Eil attacked the four new guards.

Round 6:

Melee. Alvin engaged two guards at a time.

Round 7:

Alvin dropped Shalm.

Round 8:

Alvin dropped Barirpal. Owen made another health roll, this time at a penalty of 1; he succeeded, and remained uninjured from lack of breathing.

Round 9:

Alvin dropped Tirar. The foul air duration ended, and Owen was again able to breath.

Round 10:

Zah Eil was hit.

Round 11:

Alvin drops Kordok.

Worshipping a death god does wonders for your morale in an out-and-out fight. During this fight, Alvin needed 4 or less to hit them (they had plate mail), and they needed 6 or less to hit Alvin, 4 or less to hit Zah Eil. Being only second level, they didn’t meet those low numbers nearly as often as Alvin did.

Owen realized that’s all nine of the guards. Alvin started checking to see if any of the nine guards/priests were alive. All eight were dead… during the melee, no one noticed that the slept priest (Marmin) had awoken and run off. Alvin realized that he couldn’t have disappeared past the PCs while they were fighting, nor up the stairs where the non-fighting PCs were tending to Owen, so he must have gone halfway across the bridge and then across the other bridges. Alvin ran down them, all the way to the barred passage that he had bent the bars on. He used the rope that he’d cut to gain enough leverage to bend them back, so that, hopefully, the renegade Enkian would be unable to return.