Saturday Night Dungeon: The Gate of Bellthor

 Our brave heroes are embarking on another quest in their hunt for the Witch Lord. They have made a short stop at a traveling dwarven merchant's encampment for some supplies. The dwarven merchant was carrying some armour and weapons to resupply the Imperial army, but was willing to sell some of his wares to our heroes, as they explained they were also on a quest to defeat one of the Empire's greatest enemies.

 The dwarf produced his wares, and now the Barbarian and the Dwarf heroes are fitted with a new platemail armour and a bastard sword, granting them 5 attack dice plus diagonal attacks at the cost of 2 movement squares because of the heavy armour.
The Elf did not buy any new gear, except some healing potions for the entire party. The Wizard merely bought a sling and a dagger, but decided to keep using his staff for now.

 And so our newly equipped heroes move on, and enter another part of the Witch Lord's dungeons (while enjoying a cold Strongbow cider on ice). A long hallway extends to the left and right, and a quick search by Sjengis Khan the Barbarian reveals no traps. The heroes decide to move south, to the right. At the first corner the Wizard spots two skeletons patrolling the corridor.

The Elf steps in, and shoots the first skeleton, but misses. It attacks back, but Elly blocks the attack. The other heroes can't get between her and the skeletons, so they decide to back up, so Elly the Elf can also step back for another shot. Elly shoots down the first skeleton this time, but the second one closes in and attacks her back.
Again, she blocks the attack.

As the others wait, Elly shoots down the second skeleton. The heroes continue, and after another quick check for traps and hidden doors, they move on. The Barbarian takes point and rolls some good movement dice.

Due to the heavy platemail, Sjengis Khan the Barbarian and Butchmath the Dwarf must subtract 2 steps from each movement roll, and the poor Dwarf obviously has more trouble keeping up. "Oi! Wait fer me!" his voice echoes along the corridor.

The others impatiently move on, and discover another corridor with two doors and two skeletons at the end of the corridor. Eddy Wizzard is the first to spot them, and immediately uses his long staff to destroy one of them.
Elly isn't interested in protecting Eddy, and opens one of the doors. The room is empty. She prudently searches the tile behind the door for traps, and discovers an insidious spear trap!

The remaining skeleton meanwhile attacks Eddy but it misses.
Sjengis walks inside the room, following Elly, and stays at the door, to block the skeleton in case it chases the Wizard. Eddy happily takes advantage of that, and heads inside too. He searches for treasure and finds a Scroll of Ice Storm, huzzah!
Another door leads into a red tiled room with two mummies guarding a door.

Elly decides to take a risk, and steps into the room, hoping there are no traps, and fires her crossbow at a mummy. Fortunately, no traps are activated, and the mummy is slain.
Sjengis, protecting the rear, attacks the last skeleton and barely manages to kill it. Meanwhile, Butchmath the Dwarf labours on through the corridor to catch up with the rest.

The second mummy in the red room is too far away to get to Elly in one turn, and so Elly has another chance to kill it before it can harm her. She skillfully fires two bolts into its head, and it crumbles to the floor. While the rest patiently skip a turn to let the Dwarf catch up some more (having rolled many 3's and 4's which resulted in advancing 1 or 2 steps in his heavy mail), Elly searches for traps, and finds none.

Now Sjengis follows Elly into the red room, so he can search for treasure. He finds some jewels worth 50 gold!
Finally, the Dwarf joins the others, and Elly can open the door into the next corridor. Again, she searches the tile outside of the door: it is clear.

She steps outside and sees no monsters, only another door across the hall. As the others follow her, she takes her time to search for traps inside the hall on her next turn, and finds another spear trap right at her feet!

That was a close call! But now the way is clear for Sjengis Khan to opens the door into the next room. Two skeletons and another mummy await him.

He quickly steps inside and kills the first skeleton. Fortunately, he didn't trigger any traps.
The Wizard and Dwarf stumble over eachother in the small corridor.
Elly follows Sjengis into the next room, and shoots the second skeleton down.

The only monster left is the mummy, and it moves to Sjengis and attacks, but misses!
Now Sjengis can have his go, and with his new bastard sword easily cleaves the thing in half.

Elly searches for traps, but the room is clear.
Now the others can safely join them. Sjengis finds more treasure: 100 gold!

Elly decides not to wait for Sjengis to opens the next door, and pushes past him, only to find three dangerous looking chaos warriors inside what appears to be a dining room.
She is so stunned, that she misses her attack on the closest fiend.

Two chaos warriors quickly close in on her and swing their axes. The blue one hits her for 1 damage, but the other is blocked.

The others can do nothing but wait as Elly flees back into the previous room. Sjengis is in position to block the chaos warriors, should they follow. Of course they do, and the blue warrior attacks the Barbarian, but he blocks the attack easily. Sjengis attacksa back, and slays Mr. Blue.
Now the green warrior tries his luck, and manages to do 1 point of damage versus Sjengis.

Enraged, the Barbarian swings his huge sword, and deals a whopping three damage, which Mr. Green utterly fails to block, and so he is slain.
The Dwarf rolls an amazing 8 squares, which after deducting his movement penalty just brings him next to the purple chaos warrior. He attacks, but Mr. Purple blocks the attack.

The evil warrior strikes back, and takes 1 body point from the poor Dwarf. Sjengis goes around the table, and thrusts his bastard sword in Mr. Purple's back. He falls to the floor, dead.

After Eddy Wizzard searches for traps, Butchmath tries his luck and searches for treasure. A skeleton pops up from under the table. It instantly attacks the Dwarf, who is really down on his luck, but he blocks the blow.
Elly walks in, and fires her crossbow across the table, but the bolt hits the tabletop, and skitters aside.

The skeleton turns around and attacks Eddy, but he is prepared and blocks the skeleton's trident with his staff. Once again, Sjengis utterly destroys the skeleton with a swing of his mighty sword.

As the others move up to the Barbarian, he opens the door to the next room, and having learned that this dungeon is filled with spear traps, he searches the first square in the doorway.
No surprise: another trap springs!

Eddy heads in and searches the rest of the room for traps and finds a pit trap in the middle of the room. The Dwarf takes another try at finding treasure, and finds a measly 25 gold.
The party ventures onward, and after making sure the next hallway isn't trapped, Butchmath is the first to open the next door. An army of zombies stares him in the face. "Oh bugger..." he moans.

He uses his bastard sword on the first zombie, and cuts off its head. The other zombies shuffle foward and the one near the Dwarf feebly swings an arm, which Butchmath easily dodges.
As the rest moves into position to help the Dwarf with some diagonal attacks (the first attack by Eddy misses) Butch takes down another zombie.

Another zombie takes a swing at Butch, but misses. Being short has it's advantages, Butch smiles. Now the others can join in on the fight, the zombies are quickly dispatched. But not before the last zombie manages to hit Butchmath for 2 damage!

Inside the room, the Heroes find no traps, but Sjengis finds a potion of resilience.
The next room has two more mummies in it, and Elly rushes in, hoping there are no traps, and shoots one of them down.

The second mummy attacks Elly, but she blocks the attack. As Sjengis and Eddy catch up, Butch also walks in to the room, and takes care of the second mummy.
Elly decides to search for traps, and finds a secret door into a room with two treasure chests.

The Barbarian once again has the first chance to search for treasure in the blue room, and finds some holy water. Very handy against these undead. He takes up position in front of the door leading out.
The Dwarf doesn't want to wait, and decides to pass the Barbarian, but as he opens the door, he sees two skeletons blocking the way, and so he must step aside.

Fortunately, his bastard sword has diagonal reach, and he rolls a whopping 5 skulls, utterly squashing the first skeleton. Huzzah!
Elly meanwhile searches the chests, and finds 200 gold coins!
The remaining skeleton steps forward and does one damage to Sjengis. It is the last thing it does, as the Barbarian's usual temper makes short work of him.

The heroes move into the corridor, find no traps, and decide to see if they can go back to the room they missed on their way in.
As they reach the door after a few movement rolls, they find it is empty...

Now they all have to head all the way back to see what's in the center room... It must be the boss!
Sjengis is getting impatient, and asks Eddy to cast "pass through rock" on him, so he can take a shortcut.
Elly quickly searches the empty room for treasure, and gets the "nothing" card. Well, that was usefull...

Sjengis Khan passes through the rock blockade and finds two skeletons around the corner. He immediately attacks and kills one of them.

As the others track back (and the Dwarf once again lags behind), the Barbarian is attacked by the second skeleton, and loses one body point.

But once again, the skeleton only has one chance, before Sjengis pounds it into pulp witrh his bastard sword.
The other catch up with Sjengis, just as the last skeleton is down, and so Sjengis opens the door to the center room.

There awaits Bellthor, the gate guardian, an evil mind flayer. The Barbarian rushes towards him, keen on ending him before he has the chance to attack. He rolls three skulls, but his attack has no effect!
The others step inside the room as well, and another attack results in nothing.

As soon as the lagging Dwarf enters the room, the door closes behind him, and Bellthor springs to life! He attacks Sjengis, and takes another body point from his total. Then Bellthor spews forth a cloud of poisonous breath, doing 4 mind damage to the Barbarian. Even with his Talisman of Lore, Sjengis cannot withstand this mind attack, and passes out!

Bellthor attacks each hero with his poisonous breath, but the others withstand the attack. With but a few mind points left, the Wizard casts his most powerfull air spell, Genie, and rolls 4 skulls against Bellthor. He can only block one damage, and is slain by the powerfull spell.

But then Bellthor explodes in a huge cloud of poison, and the heroes all pass out one by one...

What will happen next? Stay tuned for more adventures!