Fate has intervened and gave me a decently filled out group, with Chief and I getting ahold of Kirk after a long hiatus and a chance finding out that Will was back in town and so I started them on the Night Below boxed set. A nice conversion to 3.5 can be found at enworld. Spoilers will abound (obviously).

First, the party;
Will, playing the Dwarven Fighter, Kirk the Dwarven Monk and Chief an Aasimar Cleric of Pelor.



We begin with the nearly destitute party on the way to Thurmaster, to deliver a box of spell components to Tauster with a stopover in Milborne for some respite and then a riverboat the rest of the way to Thurmaster. A few miles out before they reach Milborne, they run into a few farmers and strike up a conversation. A few arrows whiz by and the panicked Farmers scream, "bandits!!" The two Dwarves move to engage the Archers while the Cleric moves to protect the Farmers from incoming fire. Their ruse a complete success, the farmers pummel the Cleric into unconsciousness, while the fighter with his cleave feat proves deadly to the would be ambushers. The Monk doesn't fare as well, taking a few rounds to finally dispatch the other Archer.



After rousing the Cleric it's a few more miles to Milborne, where they head to the Baron of Mutton for some well deserved rest, but upon arriving, they find the place in disarray. It seems one of the guests, Jelenneth has gone missing. The party talks to her father, Andren and her boyfriend Barthelew and learns that there are no signs of a struggle and that she was apprenticed to Tauster. Her father thinks she just went back to Thurmaster, but Barthelew is adamant that something is amiss. He insists she would never have left without saying goodbye and he found her spell component pouch under her bed. He implores the party to investigate and head for Thurmaster with all due speed.

Turned out a little blurry, even after several tries.



The party has a dull journey to Thurmaster the following day and heads straight for Tauster's "Tower." He hasn't seen her since she left and asks the group to travel to Kuiper's (a local Ranger) and enlist his skills in the search. Kuiper takes them to where she usually gathers herbs near Hog's Brook, a small stream, but they find nothing. After a couple of hours, the encounter Oleanne, a Druid who begs them to help capture a young boy who she saw turn into a werebear. He doesn't know what's wrong with him and was frightened and fled every time he saw her. They agree to help and camp in the woods, where they are soon ambushed by a group of Orcs. With the aid of the NPCs, the Orcs are somewhat easily dispatched, although the Monk was direly wounded and moments from death.

Unfortunately, the pics of this battle turned out terrible. We had to make up  characters at the beginning of the session, so it was a little short on play time and RPing in the town was lengthy as well. next week should see more pic action as well.