So the players find themselves in an unknown dungeon which suddenly collapses. While everyone was chatting waiting for me to start I suddenly busted out Roll an Acrobatics check! Only the wizard failed taking minor damage from a rock. With the entrances collapsed I then backtracked into telling them that they were slaves and explained how they became slaves etc... To make the beginning hard, all players had magical manacles that reduced all acro/athlet checks by 5, could use magic, and had no weapons and armor. The dragonborn also had muzzles on. Ya, I can be a bit like a dick.
So knowing that, they immediately split up and take different routes...yay...the warlord decided to take one route and everyone else the other. Oh, at this time the warlock hasn't shown up, she comes in later in the game.
So, two different things happen, the warlord comes across a fight between slaves and Watchers (Human Rabble) fighting. he quickly help out the slaves and they follow him around. He then finds two more who are holding a door closed, they ask him to find something to barricade it so they can leave. He finds a pike, the first weapon found. He props it against the door, keeping it closed. (He's in the undead section of the maze, so undead are behind every door) The slaves follow him around at this point (more), so he has about 4 slaves following him. After the door incident he is greeted by Karim, one of the unique NPC's in the dungeon, guarding a door that he finds out to be where a magical item is. Karim tells him not to go in there, and tells the warlord to find more weapons to outfit himself and slaves with. So he does.
Now the other group goes on the complete opposite direction. They get to the trap area, where they find slaves hanging outside a door which they claim is holding in Guards. They just walk past and meet up with another NPC that tells them no to go further or they would activate the traps. They try to throw this NPC into the corridor that has traps but failed. So they walk back to where the slaves were guarding the door just to have the door suddenly get all smokey and explode with a mage coming out. The players immediately run, leaving the slaves to die. They decide to run where they think the warlord is, failing a perception roll and tripping/breaking the same pike keeping a door closed. 4 Decrepit Skeletons come out and attack. They quickly kill them, loot them, and meet up with Karim.
They decide Karim is a guard in disguise, and try to open the door behind him. He asks for them to stop and immediately distrust the group. Since the dragonborn have muzzles they can't talk, so for Karim to show he is trustworthy he present the only key he has which happens to be the key for the muzzles. Now the players really don't trust him, and leave, after he asks for them to find the Ward, which is the base of operations for the slaves (Who, the players will discover, are being organized by a few NPC's, Karim being one).
One of the players, the paladin, decides to leave and explore, getting ambushed by a guard and dog, and getting killed after I have constantly told my players that its OK to run. The other find the Ward, getting much needed healing and even some weapons. They decide to take an extended rest, which I rolled and it came up that they would be safe for now. When the players wake the paladin is with them, as is Karim now (He carried him there, players never bothered to wonder how the paladin got there though...). Karim discovers that the Wizard is a Wizard (Who does not have his Spellbook, being a slave w/ no possessions and unable to casts his daily's), the players being very secretive of their identities for some reason, and tells him to find Milo over by the (trap) area. Getting a holy symbol from the cleric, having the cleric use his key to unlock the chains, and then healing everyone, they make their way there.
However, the mage that broke out near the trap area has a guard friend. This was the first real encounter with enemies with more than 1 HP, which scared them and threw them off when they found that their attacks didn't kill them right away. So after working together, they find Milo hiding in a crate. It's at this point we had to start getting things done, it was nearing 6. This is also when the Warlock showed up, who I introduce later.
So Karim tells Milo what's up (me talking to myself FTW), and Milo tell them alright, I'll try and disable the traps. Karim gives him a set of tools (I've preplanned this out and I have a story to everything so don't ask why didn't Milo have them to start...). So a fun little game where Milo rolls his thievery and ask a player to step forward. If he passes, the trap is disables on that square, if not, some spears come up and hit (maybe) the player. They manage to get to a doorway which is where they were heading and open it up to find the dagger of Slight Annoyance (Dagger w/ Duelist), bookshelves, and an unconscious Warlock. The Wizard searches through the books and finds his spellbook (Who the main villain collects as souvenirs) and all is good, no one wonders why there was an unconscious Warlock. So at this point we have to finish. A slave yells from a distance that they found the exit and the players make their way there. Basically being told they had to kill the Slavemaster, wh guarded the exit, the players run in to find dead slave bodies and blood everywhere. Bane stands up from his makeshift throne of corpses and tells the players, "So, more have come to reap my judgement. Bring it!" cause we need to finish this game up and I didn't wanna bother role playing too heavily. Slavemaster Bane was a lvl 4 Solo Human berserker with teh savage berserker template. Fun fun! So battle starts, the players are struggling to kill Bane, who uses a chain whip with Resounding enchant, which I abused to make it on hit players are dazed. So Bane got a +7 vs AC, 2d6 + 4 dmg, gets to make a standard melee attack when hit by a melee attack, and I added a power that lets him attack twice before he dies when reduced to 0 HP. He managed to kill both the Warlord and Paladin with his final attack, nearly killed the fighter3 times, scared the crap out of the wizard and warlock, and never moved cause the area they were in was small and his chain whip had reach.
The players barely manage to kill him, revive the dying players, and while Bane laughed as he lay there dying, the Fighter stabs his sword into his head. Karim and the others come out (who stayed behind the door due to a surprise guard attack from behind) and open the doorway leading out. once out, the find that they are no where near civilized lands and decide "...hey, why not make a village?" Then it ends.
/sigh
Soo yeah. We skipped ALOT and the players barely fought anything, but loved the bane fight soooo much.
