Waxing Nostalgic

In honor of our dead comrade, well one of them at least, I thought I'd go over one of the very first adventures we had with Marcus the very very old Druid.

The adventure went something like:

The old man wades out into the water turning into a large octopus as he slides into the water.
half hour later, the party waiting at waters edge,someone wonders out loud, suppose something has happened to the third scout we sent out?

Alfreca says, “Eh, the old fart is a druid right? Does it really matter? But if we wait much longer he could die of natural causes…”
Snicker.

Another half hour passes.
Beoflan muses, “I wonder how Wedneb is holding out?”

Half hour.

Snagger says, “Ever notice how the light dances on his bald little head just so?”
Entire party looks his way. “What?” replies Snagger on the defensive.

Nightbreeze considers conducting diplomacy on the defensive, would it give her a +4 on sense motive…

Half hour.

A lone tentacle slithers up from the water and then disappears with equal slither-es-ness-ness.

Half hour.

A large wet limp dog appears.
Not moving.
No collar.

Beoflan, looking through his magical gem, declares it to be the long lost Marcus.
The ever helpful Grimslade appears to levitate the limp helpless form and smacks it with a wand of cotton candy declaring the new party member to be an evil agent of Vecna bent on destroying us all—especially the women.

If I remember correctly Alfreca and Lintern freak out at this point.

Beoflan gathers his flock and heads back to Wedneb to find comfort in the protection of the Sling.

Marcus is revived and tells his wondrous tale, but it’s really hard to remember, something about something? and being helpless ? (He’s a druid right? this is different than normal how?) and water or something but this part is vibrantly clear:“I swam up onto the beach, but it wasn’t a beach of sand, it was covered from wall to wall in cut and polished gems.”And the rest is fuzzy again, but who really cares! A friggin beach of gems! Gems! GEMS! So the party sets out with Beoflan borrowing the mighty mud ring. An airywater (via mud ring) and a mass swim later the party wades out into the water.

Jaq, “Oh crap we, better go back and drop my ridingdog off with Wedneb”

Carlston Blue, “We just cast all the spells. We’d have to wait another entire day.”

Jaq looks to his trusty steed, “Sit. Good boy.”

And they’re off.

There was some fighting--a roper or two, and a bunch of xorn; again, it’s all fuzzy, what we all remember is Baron Carlston braving all odds, fearlessly ignoring the danger all around, summoning five huge earth elementals to not fight the enemy but to Gather The Treasure! The image of him standing there, holding open a huge portable hole, earth elementals pouring mounds and mounds of gems into the thing, will stay with us for all our days. A quick estimate, based on our two random samples, and estimating the beach to be 100’x20’ and 2 hand-fulls per square foot yields about three hundred grand—wait for it, wait for it--EACH! 25k more if we stiff wedneb :) oh and we found another one of those “mysterious” statues and a huge necromancy gem.

As it turns out an entire beach of gems is only worth about 50k, and sadly no power word each.

If I ever find the guy that wrote for DMs to keep their PCs poor so they stay adventuring...