The Cast
Sherman the Human Warlord
Heir to a massacred group of mercenaries, once of some repute, Sherman is an adventurer to hone his strategic style and tactical talents. With revenge completed, and subsequent depression conquered, his path is clear to him and he only longs for the next great challenge.
Fannag the Halfling Rogue
Fannag is no fighter, despite being the most deadly member of the party under the right circumstances. He travels with his band of merry on-again off-again lovers to seek strange, interesting occurrences and characters. There is no chivalrous act too noble, and no lecherous act too deprived for Fannag the master thief. All-in-all, though, he's a nice man.
Amaadus the Dragonborn Paladin
Though he once followed the path Sehanine's pure freedom, Amaadus is now a Paladin of Bahamuut; a believer that good is protected by a well-balanced amount of order. He is the team's physical guardian, but when it comes to morality or pragmatic advice, Amaadus is as stoic as they come - perhaps both traits are two sides of the same coin.
Stravis the Dwarvern Cleric
A Cleric of the adventure goddess Avandra, Stravis keeps her mind focused on the simple. Why fret over the complexities of ambition when one can adventure for the sake of adventure? Why get bogged down in philosophy and politics when one can enjoy a lively conversation over cake and tea? Do you know? Stravis doesn't. Stravis used to work at the bakery.
Harrak the Voidsoul Genasi Psion
Whatever that means, he wears a black mask and black robes to cover his black-striped dark-black skin. Look into his eyes and you'll see a black so beyond black that it's a blinding white at the same time, and yet neither. Staring too long is like taking a spoon to your mind. Not to mention he's a Psion.
Motives: Mysterious. History: Hidden. Aims: Ambiguous. Yet Harrak has helped the team overcome trouble time after time, so it seems that he at least values the power of well-bonded teamwork...probably.

Adventure the First: Escape from Sembia
Session 1 Paelias, an Eladrin Wizard, recruits Fannag, Amaadus and Sherman to help him deliver a scroll to Inius Olger - as per a well-paid contract. A fight breaks out and Inius is killed before anyone can move a muscle. Our heroes incapacitate the guards and escape (Paelias teleports away, never to be seen again since). Fannag loots the fish from a warehouse and attempts to trade his newly-stolen produce at the markets in exchange for a distraction. This plan backfires and the three barely outrun the guards enough to avoid capture, escaping on a trio of horses tied by the stables (with some collateral damage ensuing).
Session 2 Our heroes approach a Hobgoblin camp stealthily and find Stravis and Harrak captured. Harrak is unconscious, so Stravis heals him (upon her rescue by Fannag). Meanwhile, Sherman and Amaadus do battle with the hobgoblins. Fannag pushes a pesky archer into the campfire, and Harrak quickly joins the combat by throwing the flaming corpse into a nearby hobgoblin mage and down the stairs of the tower that is their base. The battle is quickly rounded up after that, and the party takes this opportunity to rest.
Session 3 Introductions are made and the situation assessed. Following the dying advice of Inius Olger, and their intuition, our heroes set out for the Dalelands. They opt to take the mountain path to avoid major patrol routes, but are instead faced with vicious skeletal warriors on the edge of a cliff. A boneshard skeleton is killed, and Stravis fails to climb a rock with disastrous consequences.
Session 4 The party meet a caravan led by the fighter:ranger merchant couple Ealdhert and Sophia. Traveling together to the Dalelands (to avoid toll booths), the caravan daughter Gwenevere trades Fannag some sneaking shoes for a healthy sum of gold pieces (in order that she might buy a dress when they next reach a city, which would be essential if she were to ever make friends).
Session 5 Our valiant evildoers are thwarted once more as they do indeed run into some sort of ragtag border patrol. A mage girl and her mercenaries request to search the caravan but are refused by Ealdhert, who asks instead for a fight. The spellcaster is badly wounded instantly by an attack from the shadows from Fannag's crossbow. She runs as combat unfolds: Amaadus and Ealdhert effectively take the brunt of the berserkers' attacks, while the others keep the situation under control with calculated attacks. When the battle is over, Fannag and Harrak chase down the Human Mage, tripping her up with bolas conjured by Harrak. Interrogation is easy, and she explains all she knows about the scroll, which isn't much - not that our heroes even have the scroll anymore. One of the mercenaries, a Shadar-Kai chainfighter, is also captured, but reveals nothing. He asks to be killed by he who bested him in combat, but Ealdhert instead has the shadar-kai charge him with his own weapon to show him just how far he was indeed bested. A vast underestimation, Ealdhert is impaled on his own sword, but grabs his foe and falls back into the river then knocks him unconscious. Harrak saves Ealdhert's life with his telekinesis, for which the merchants are eternally grateful.
Adventure One - Fin

Adventure the Second: To Victor go the Spoils
Session 6 Leaving by caravan for Eindhoven (a mercantile town in High Dale) the party arrives at a quiet church at the edge of the forestland on the outer rim of the town. Thinking they might find supplies there to aid in healing the two wounded passengers, Stravis asks if they might stop. Sophia agrees, since she believes it might aid her husband. Stravis finds a small shrine to Avandra by the entrance to the church, and investigates; she finds a holy symbol imbued with the power of Avandra's love for life. Fannag notices three gold coins on the shrine's altar; he tosses a copper piece. Sherman continues on inside, but quickly noticed the place is in shambles.
The ruinous church is mostly empty, a few worn statues stand in line like soldiers standing guard in a royal chamber, at the end of the church, a figure in blue plate mail prays to a great statue of a dragon, who Amaadus recognises to be Bahamuut. The heroes place Ealdhert down and get to work bandaging his wounds. Harrak takes the time to look around the area, but finds nothing and returns to wait by the entrance. Alondite, the paladin who was praying, introduces himself and his mission to rid the church of a plague of monsters - and the predicament of dropping down to the lower levels of the church. While the party considers how to get to the lower levels, they hear banging and chittering in the distance. Openly ignoring this, they continue to fumble around with mechanisms; Fannag manages to activate a trap that has the statue of Bahamuut shoot flames at him, he walks it off only a little singed. A few try to pry open the bars of a metal gate leading to a trapdoor, but to no avail. Harrak phases through the bars, but fins no way to operate the mechanism controlling the bars. There is some discussion of using ropes, sunrods, or both, to safely descent the large open chasm on one side of the church.
Just as Sherman realises that the church is symmetrical and that the other trapdoor lies unblocked under a little rubble on the ruined side of the church, an adult kruthik leaps over the wall and onto the statue of Bahamuut, where it fires poison spikes at Alondite and Amaadus. Several kruthik hatchlings and younglings also storm the church, communicating in a constant chittering and sharp insect screeches. They fight tactlessly but relentlessly, backing each character into a corner. The adult grips the statues with its back legs while lashing out at the heroes with its powerful front claws. Sophia rushes Ealdhert back to the caravan. Meanwhile, Harrak dispatches a few hatchlings on the lower levels and discovers a strange portal behind a grand set of metal doors that have been bashed open, presumably by the Kruthiks. Upstairs, Susé (the human sorcerer they captured) fights well and the party get a glimpse of her power for the first time, but she is eventually taken out by poison and relentless claw attacks. Luckily, Alondite draws the attention of the adult well enough to allow the party to save her life, and the battle is eventually won; the scent of a dead adult warns other kruthiks from attacking.
Harrak had recognised the portal as an inactive inter-planar portal, and explains it to the party. It is unclear where it is set to travel, but it is of the higher caliber (often capable of teleporting to multiple planes). The party ventures onwards into the kruthik tunnels, as Alondite urgently wants to find his partner, Ragnell, who was taken as they camped the night nearby, presumably by the kruthiks. This story is soon confirmed by a rescued imp who was being attacked by a group of kruthik. The imp offers Harrak the knowledge of a ritual to see the final moments of any recent dead, in return for the slaying of the kruthik hivelord whose presence prevents him from repairing the inter-planar portal that would allow him to return home. Alondite doesn't wish to trust an imp, but their goals are aligned at least in the slaying of the hivelord. He reluctantly agrees to allow the party to assist the imp; wanting him gone before his mentor, Victor, arrives at the soon-to-be liberated church.
Session 7 The party take a long rest before continuing on, trusting that the dead kruthiks they placed around their makeshift campsite in the portal room would prevent further attack. Eight hours pass; the adventurers continue on. They agree to defeat the hivelord, but their path leads only to a thin vertical tunnel which Amaadus determines to be about one hundred feet [≈ length of longest blue whale measured, the largest animal] deep (by measurement of a dropped kruthik corpse). Amaadus pushes a statue, that had fallen from the main level of the church down into the basement and was thus detached from the ground, up the the pit's edge. Then, combining the ropes of Amaadus, Sherman and Stravis - they use the statue as a weight to lower themselves down safely. Stravis, Sherman, Harrak and Susé all make it down safely, but when Amaduus brings his massive weight unto the poor rope it allows him to move down only seventy feet, despite his care, before snapping at the statue end; he is left holding himself up with only his back and feet pushing against the walls of the tunnel. To escape this predicament, he forces the rope into the wall with amazing strength, and abseils smoothly down to join his party. Fannag attaches his grappling hook to the statue and follows. When he reaches the end of his fifty feet of rope, he deftly detaches the hook and falls twenty feet before catching Amaadus's rope and sliding down to his friends.
In the pitch blackness, a torch is lit; the decapitated skull of a huge black dragon dominates the room. Intrigued, Harrak explores around. He finds a lava pit between their position and a higher ledge. The party turn back, except for Fannag who attempts the jump. Dexterously, he throws his grappling hook between two rocks and swings across, then pulls himself up the rope into a cavern complex. Meanwhile, Sherman and the team advance down another path and find a wounded Alondite who had dropped one hundred feet [≈ length of longest blue whale measured, the largest animal], and an unconscious Ragnell who had been overwhelmed by kruthiks while fighting to escape the hivelord. Further in, they find and face off against this boss. Immediately, Harrak unleashes his powers to cripple the hivelord and throw it across the room. It burrows underground, allowing the party time to dispatch its minions before reappearing and facing them. The synergy of the group has been steadily increasing, and they now flank and keep each other healed with little effort. Meanwhile, Fannag impresses nobody by slaughtering hatchlings while sprinting blissfully and innocently through cavern corridors. Eventually, as the rest of the party struggle with the hivelord, he finds a fifty feet wall leading out of the caverns, yet fails to find the strength to pull himself out in his hurry. He falls on his back, but still dodges the claw attacks of his pursuers. Attempting again, he manages to climb to freedom.
Eventually, our other heroes manage to put down the hivelord.
Session 8 The hivelord’s explosive demise causes a tremendous rush of kruthiks towards the party, the strain of so many digging claws leaving the smaller tunnels at once causes the caves to spill dust and small rocks from above. They turn, and run. Kruthiks rush in from all sides; Alondite calls for help lifting Ragnell, Sherman assists; at varying paces they run through the caves. The tunnel above, where the part entered, is lined with upwardly fleeing kruthiks, it becomes apparent that the kruthiks aren't charning the party so much as violently fleeing the caves. They reach the gap above the lava pool, there are kruthiks climbing along the ceilings and walls but for the non-spider party members the five foot upwards fifteen feet away ridge seems much more of an obstacle. Harrak fades and reappears on the other side, then uses his telekinesis to lift Ragnell across. Amaadus and Sherman link hands and throw a sprinting Stravis across, but she fudges the timing and isn’t going to make it: she reaches for Ragnell’s leg and misses that too; Harrak is prepared to drop Ragnell, but thinks instrad to extend his staff. Stravis manages to catch onto it and Harrak pulls her up, making his opinions of the weight of dwarvern women quite clear. Susé is expected to follow, but doesn’t trust the wisdom of the plan after seeing how close Stravis came to a lava bath, so she jump up and grabs the carapace of a ceiling crawling kruthik, then steps down onto the cliff with her thunderstep spell, causing the kruthiks above to fall into the lava below. Monster steam rises, it smells awful, Susé likes it. Alondite holds off the kruthiks with a defensive stance at the chokepoint entrance, while Sherman throws a rope to the party across the gap. He and Amaadus make it across, and the party continues down the cave until a junction. While most follow the kruthiks heading east, Harrak and Susé go west and find a strange egg chamber. Stalagmites surround a deep pit, above is an equally deep alcove in the room's ceiling; giant spiderish eggs line the walls of both openings. Harrak scrambles the eggs with psion power, rocks fall to crush to lower eggs, Susé cooks the remaining upper eggs with a spurt of flame, neither are too hungry. At the end of the cave, Sherman climbs the wall and throws down his rope, which is used to hoist up the party members and Ragnell's unconsious body.
As they leave the cave, the chittering and banging of claw on rock becomes muffled and distant. From a rocky outcrop of a hill the party sees Eindhoven: a busy-looking town, with plump, red buildings and thick grey stone walls. Trading carts enter and leave from either side, some continuing off into the distance, others coming towards the hill. People walk from a third exit up another small hill, with baskets full of produce, to a residential district overlooking the town.
Ragnell awakens and, after learning what happened, thanks the party dearly for saving his life, then returns to the church to await Victor. Harrak joins him and they discus events, really though he went to receive the promised ritual from the imp trapped there. Luckily, Ragnell didn't learn of the imp.
Fannag during all of this, found the sleaziest pub in town, the Goodly Devil. There, he was approached by Rower, representing the merchant’s guild with a job.
While wandering the town looking for Fannag, Susé asks Sherman if she can leave, vaguely saying she can always use force (as more of a statement than a threat). Sherman is non-committal, so she asks Fannag when they meet him. “Am I still your prisoner?” “You were never our prisoner.” She contemplates for awhile, then leaves confused, Fannag paying her enough for a night at an inn.
The party, now gathered except for Harrak, hear Rower's mission. To recover a small convoy of caravans trapped on the Elven side of the Alamanamalan border to the east. The pay is good, and the work simple; they decide to accept, and will visit the merchant's guild the next day for their down payment.
While in the town, Fannag takes the chance to re-equip himself and also buy a tent. Harrak buys some ritual ingredients. Everyone hits the sack collectively at the Goodly Devil.
Adventure Two - Fin

Adventure the Third: Swords are thicker than Water