The Temple update

Got home to late to give you all a Temple of Elemental Evil update.

The party consists of a bladesinger, a cavalier, a cleric of Moradin and a thief.  (Next time, I will give you their names.  I am a bad player in that I don't know how to spell the names of the two elves, the bladesinger and the thief, nor the dwarf.)

 We are deep in the water node, have collected three of the four gems.  We had just finished clearing out a lair of Vodyanoi.  To get around, a majority of the party had been staying in the bladesinger's bag of holding while the priest walks through the air using an airwalk scroll he found awhile back.  (This is not the best idea, yet until recently, it was the only thing that worked.)

We get to an island, are attacked by lacedon.  Fourteen of them.  The bladesinger by this point has Fly up and is hovering away from us, waiting for the right time to strike.  This doesn't occur until the dwarf and my cavalier are grappled and being dragged into the water.  The thief is barely surviving, lucking out on the paralysis because she is an elf.

It was almost a TPK.  The bladesiger pulled out a shield that is cursed, calling all undead to him.  The lacedon turned from us and moved into the water, where he used a lightning bolt to great effect.  Being greedy adventurers--plus wanting to look for the water node gem, we dove into the atoll that was the lacedon's lair.  The bladesinger and theif using the Fly spell as a way to buzz through the water at speed and get out in a round or two.  The bladesinger was attacked by a sea hag and is still under the effects of it.  After fleeing, we get to the middle of the water node and Jaroo, the druid from Hommlet appears.

(A bit of a side not needs to be put up here.  In our game, the DM has larger machinations going on with Hedrack.  The temple decided to attack Hommelt, we as the adventurers thought it was a good idea to go in and try and strike from within.  While we were dealing with the nodes, Hedrack attacked the refugees of Hommlet, killing Burne and many others.  Jaroo was taken prisoner and sent into the water node.  We only know about the attack because the DM wanted to give us a glimpse of what was going on off screen of the "main adventure.  I approved of this.  Yet, it was exposition.  I think it would have been kinda fun to try and play some of the NPCs in this battle with humanoids, Hedrack and a red dragon.  Yes, we know going in we will probably lose.  Yet it was just a thought.  Maybe I will try something like that myself in one of my upcoming campaigns.  More than anything, it was would a way to keep the players engaged in the game itself.)

With Jaroo hurt and without equipment, we escaped the node and went back to the maid node room.  Jaroo went off as a sparrow to try and find spell components while we waited in an dome of opaque force.  We were attacked by two blue skinned ogres (not ogre magi).  My cavalier went out to fight them while the thief attacked from inside with arrows.  I was able to get one of the ogres down to half his hit points before two things happened.  One, the ogres started to hit me with their two handed swords causing major damage.  It wouldn't have been to bad if the second problem didn't crop up, the thief started to hit me instead of the ogres.  She was firing into melee and our DM was being very hardcore.  Which I do approve of again.  (Look, in my opinion, if you fire into a melee, there is a chance you will have some friendly fire.  I know other editions did things to "remedy" this.  I'm not bashing them for saying, that is silly in my opinion.  Combat should be deadly and a little unpredictable.)

Jaroo returned soon afterwards and we entered the water node, falling into the vast ocean again and stopped for the night.