And so it begins.

It started in a bar. Doesn't it always? Over a few drinks, stories of hardship, a general acknowledgement that life is universally unfair, and a desire to make things better. Certainly better in terms of monetary options anyway. I don't even remember if we paid the bar tab when we left.

We'd heard of a small outpost that was involved in some shady stuff. The sort of place which really shouldn't be left to fester into something a little more worrying. So we decided to do something about it. We kicked the door down and charged in. There were little ratlings everywhere. I know some are good hearted. I run with one. But these guys seemed to be under the control of some wierdo shaman. Not only that, they had a cave bear.

But what immediately caught my eye was a chest in the other corner. The ratlings swarmed us and that bear just kept on coming. I decided to back up a bit to clear the ground and ensure that we could get a bit of breathing room. And also to get closer to that chest.

We managed to kill a few of those lesser vermlings. Our little mind thief was probably more skilled than I was and was dropping them all over the place. I managed to grab a small pouch of coin from the chest and tried to lay into the bear. But I just couldn't manage it. The vermling came to my rescue, and then with the spellweaver we pushed forwards together to clear up the mess. I left them two pop the last two and went and opened the door to the next room. I wished I hadn't.

There were a few Lurkers and other nasties in there. But I got a couple of hits in and managed to poison one, but whilst I was catching my breath, leaning against the wall, one of the boss Lurkers threw me a terrific punch and knocked me out cold. I was done for. I only found out from the others what happened afterwards, when the Demons and Imps threw our bodies out. Their demonic senses probably didn't realise that we were only unconscious and not dead. But to us, at the time, it was pretty much the same.

What happened was that the Spell Weaver and Thief managed to clear the room. That little ratty guy was looting the corpses all over the place. He got way more than I did. But after stealing themselves the Spellweaver broke open the final door. Much to her dismay. It was trapped and knocked her badly. Eventually there was just the little ratguy facing a roomful of Demons and Imps. He fired in something to deal with them and then turned and ran. But somewhere along the lines, he was overcome.

So what did we learn from this? Well for starters we need to get more organised and work better as a team. Cover each others backs and understand how we can utilise each others skills better.

Personally, I need to grab more goodies before that tatty rat does. And learn not to catch my breath when I have nasty monsters running right at me. I think I need to head back to the bar for a drink.