This round started at a bar, with a mage dressed completely in rat pelts asking for help retrieving his magic rat mask from the mages guild. The party didn't trust the rat mage and decided to check it out for themselves.

They went to a bar close to the mages guild, and found it to be filled with mages, each one wearing the skins of a particular animal. They talked to the mage of dungeness crabs, Carl. He confided that the Guildmaster, Tabitha of the cats, did not like the rat mage and was always picking on him. And since the fire mage was not allowed into the mage guild, they decided to help out the rat mage.

The rat mage was going to shrink them down to the size of rats so they could sneak in undetected. No one believed that his pills would reverse the process though. They needed a guinea pig. Too bad they kicked Tom the demon hunter out of the group last time (Tom was a random encounter last time).

The crime fighter used his hear calls of help ability, and got two successes. He stated that Tom was calling for help, and he was being attacked by a spotted spider. A short fight and their test subject was found.

The rat mage met them at the back of the mages guild. He shrunk the party and then ran off quickly. The party went through a crack in the wall and hit the first obstacle, the doggy door. The fighters tried to open it up, but only the mage succeeded in a virility test. The crime fighter thought it would be funny to hit the mage after he went through, but he missed and got a door to the face for his troubles.

The mage had used his read runes ability on a sign in the garden to get directions to the guildmasters quarters. After using his shadow word to help everyone hide, he ate a piece of catnip and scratched on the post. The door opened and an expectant "Fluffy?" was heard. They hid quickly as the cat mage came out looking for her cat, and then snuck inside. They had to climb a wall and tie a rope to the keys to lower them.

The runes on the key led the group to the vault, which was "in the basement", and "unguarded". After a considerable effort, the door was opened and the treasure found. They tried to loot but failed miserably, which got me some bad looks. One player got one more wealth though.

Deciding to take their leave, they went back to the doggy door. But Fluffy was there to meet them. A big battle started, ending with a huge swing from the fighter (after a charge) that killed the cat in one hit. With the cats death, the guildmistress came running. They booked it out of the guild and met up with the rat mage.

They were mad that they didn't find any treasure, so they sent an anonymous letter to the cat mage to let her know who killed her cat. That made them a whole lot happier.

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We used d10's this time instead of the odd/evens, and it seemed to work out better. Even when the players had more dice than I, I would sometimes win. They made me switch dice when I had a streak of 10's.


Jason