The 2nd adventure, a continuation of the first, let our stalwart companions to Edge City and its sewer and water systems underlying part of the city. To recap, Crut was to mark those areas that unaligned thieves were using as "property" of the thieves guild, as well as collect noses to track how many were killed.
We got through the first part as outlined here. I did not get to do a recap of the 2nd part, so it is a bit hazy. However, in order to bring player parity into this as two of the players has 2 characters each, as well as being a bit more advanced due to experience, we added a reptile man they had created as a hostage in one of the caverns. Guarded by 2 half-Orcs and what looked to be a large gator man (hey, I got a cool mini and wanted to play it!), they barely managed to defeat that trio when another rogue attacked from the rear (the youngest player wanted one of the minis he had made entered in the game, and it almost killed one of his characters!). The combat did not go well for Hans, our newest member: he fired his arquebus. And missed - Hans has a horrible DX. And at $100 per shot, and taking 4 rounds to prep, it is not an efficient weapon. The new character only managed to get out of his ropes in the last couple of rounds of combat and joined in for the last round. All told. ,Hans almost died, and downed some of the healing potion they found in that particular area (I was a bit generous but I actually did roll 2d6 healing potions as a random treasure and rolled an 8). The battle axe was picked up by Cheeli - unable to use it due to lacking the ST, they may work their way up to using some of the weapons they've recovered. And Cheeli is both the walking tank as well as the general purpose porter, carrying quite a bit but not enough to be encumbered. I believe it was this chamber that 2 very useful items came up: a +3DX ring for Hans, and a Blur ring for Crut. There may yet be repercussions to the rings but we'll see.
Continuing along, there was a pit trap, filled with sticky tar. Crut, having a labyrinth kit, set up pitons and rope and quite readily made the leap across to the other side. Hans also made it across, but poor Cheeli managed to fall in and get coated with tar - he was a -1 DX the next few rounds until he got cleaned up! Hans helped him out of the pit, and in this narrow 3-way intersection, Hans was backing into a room to give the others room when he heard some ominous growling. A cave bear was not happy with intruders! A fight occurred and again, it does not do well for Hans but they managed to kill the bear, and have a short break and roast some bear for eating. And Cheeli, patting himself all over, runs back and dives into the tar pit, searching for the piece of wall he had hacked off from their 1st adventure. He had been crooning to that painted eye when he thought no one else was looking, his tie to the Dwarf mage from the previous adventure. Sadly, he did not find it, and was only more coated in tar.
Moving along, Cheeli even slower than before, is at the front when attacked by 2 giant frogs. While not a threat really, there is a brief scuffle and along with the tar are frog guts splattered all over poor Cheeli. At this point, a trio of frog-like creature pop their heads up, little black eyes glistening in the torchlight. With squeaky voices, they ask if the big furry monster was killed. When answered yes, they threw a bag of scavenged coins at the group to thank them, then splashed back into the water ways. They know not to eat the corn-eyed brown trout.
At this point we are caught up I think to week ago. For this week, we start with them finding a 4-way intersection. There were footprints leading along the right-hand corridor, which had a door. Not trapped, it still took Screeve (okay, not entirely sure of the new characters name but I think that is it) a couple times to batter it down. Inside were 5 thieves, armed. I had them draw 5 random cards from the character deck, and combat proceeded. Crut was never hit - that -4DX for attacks on him for the blur ring was a good find! Yet the woman he was attacking had both a large shield and a hammer - he could barely do any damage to her even with a +5 knife. Several hits managed to just barely scrape. Meanwhile, the others were fighting and initially things were going badly. One of the thieves had a DX of 14, so rarely missed and with a rapier doing 2d-1 or so, was inflicting some major damage as well as going 1st each combat round. Crut had 2 opponents on him, one he was attacking, another Threndir was shooting at. Screeve actually had 3 against him initially. Runt was doing his staff to snake magic to send the snake around to do some damage. Somewhere in the combat, both Screeve and Cheeli managed to do a triple damage roll - Screeve neatly bisected his opponent and Cheeli crushed the backside of his opponent. Threndir finished off another with an arrow to the neck. The last 2 fighters did not go down without a fight; in fact Screeve got to 0 hit points / ST left. The Runt Gubbler, the last with the higher-power healing potion, decided to let their new companion have it. Sadly he rolled a 1 on D4, so while it brought the lizard man back from the brink of death, he was still too weak to wield any weapons. I relented a bit and they found some more healing potions (hey, a thief's life is dangerous and you can't always go to a healer if wanted for theft!). Enough to bring both Hans and Screeve to have enough ST to use their own weapons.
Back at the intersection (and this may be out of order) the frog-like trio pop back up, and offer another bag of coins if they can kill the big monster. So off our group goes in the other direction. Another trap is found, and a rock tossed on the plate. Sadly it puts Hans out - a vial of sleeping gas. He is out like a light for 10 minutes. Slung on Cheeli's back, when he wakes it is to the smell of tar, frog guts, and flatulent Dwarf - better than smelling salts! (actually, I think that happened before the thieves' room).
The final encounter was the troll, a 41 ST creature with 11 DX. With 6 of them, and even with recovering 1 point of damage per combat round, they rather readily defeated the troll. A bit more treasure was found, and then, partly due to player hunger, they manage to get their way back out and meet up with some city guard.
At this point we closed up - everyone got 200XP, Cheeli got an extra 50 for the tar pit leap, and Screeve got an extra 50 for that slice and dice, then almost dying. The group will spend some time in the city while resting and recuperating. We may have 1 or 2 more players next time around, in which case every player can only use 1 character. It may be an animal rescue: the youngest daughter has written up a character that has animal friendship and healing abilities. And now the group knows they need to have someone who can heal them! She wants giraffes, so not sure how we'll do that. But I do have a desert animals PDF someplace, and I can stick a small desert somewhere on the map, so there are possibilities!
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