Caves of Myrddin update

So last night the gang at the Armored Gopher took another shot at the dungeons below the ruins of Castle Dundagel and then later followed up with an excursion into the infamous Wet Cave.  Your primary informant for the Dundagel adventue is Gammo the Fighter, who caroused after they returned.  That night Gammo somehow wound up at the top of the belltower of the abbey church, drunk and stark naked.  While explaining to the crowd below that he was the World's Greatest Vampire Slayer he slipped and fell to what clearly should have been his death.  On the way down he cried "St. Emmet save meeeeeeeeeee!" and whaddyano, he miraculously survived the 30' fall without a scratch on his body.  So now he owes St. Emmet a solid.

But before this incident, Gammo managed to blab quite a bit about trip below Castle Dundagel:

• The party travelled down the spiral staircase from the south tower, which they had previously learned runs way deeper than they really want to go.  They instead took one of the side doors off the staircase, about 100 feet below the surface.
• They located some sort of big strange machine in a large cavern, but it appeared to be rusted and useless.
• A nearby chamber contained a mysterious magical square engraven on the floor.
• Except for a few rats that scattered, the only fight for the expedition was against a pair of vampires.
• The lair of the vampires was at the bottom of a pit trap.  Jessup the Bold fell in the trap and died, then one of the vampires dragged his body away to feast on his still-warm blood.  The party then went down into the pit they know contains vampires (I love these guys) and somehow overcame these fangy foes.
• Treasure scored by the party from the vampires included some gems, a magic sword now in the possession of Fynn the Thief, and some Everburning Torches (more on those last items in my next post).

A few days later, the party adds a couple of NPCs to its ranks, a halfling named Frito Lay (there was a chip bag handy when the character was being rolled up) and a Dutch cook/brewer called Jan.  They then visit the Wet Cave.  By questioning Frito and Jan you can discover the following facts:

• Some sort of creepy aqua-undead lurk in the Wet Caves, like a corpsy version of the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
• Some passages slope up and don't completely flood when the tide comes in.
• A magical green fog blocking one passage is poisonous.
• Lankii the Elf found some sort of wizard ring, but it had a magical trap on it that blinded most of the party for a couple hours, causing the expedition to be cut short as the one PC who saved had to guide the rest of the party out with a rope.  Too bad I didn't roll any wandering monsters at that point.

Finally, near the end of the play session Fynn and Nick's MU (whose name escapes me at the moment) decide they want to try one last quick run.  I don't think I've mentioned it on the Gameblog before, but with this spacious new dungeon I'm giving out bonus XP if you are the first PCs to visit a new section of the dungeon.  These 2nd or 3rd level PCs know where the entrance to level 8 is on the map.  They also know that they will score 800xp if they can just enter the level for a moment then run like hell. 

The rest of the party wants nothing to do with this plan, so it's just Nick's MU, Fynn and Fynn's cook as the lantern bearer.  They make it a couple hundred feet down that same big spiral staircase when they hear something growly and big further down the stairs.  Jan the Cook hands the lantern to his boss and heads back up the stairs.  Fynn lays down some oil and lights it to cover their retreat, then follows Jan.  Nick decides he wants to see whether or not the monster presumably heading up the stairs is stopped by the burning oil obstacle.

There's a roar and a blast of fire shoots up the staircase, nearly engulfing Fynn.  Nick's MU never makes it out.  The dragon has claimed its first PC.