My players are not incompetent, only inattentive. My players are not incompetent, only inattentive. My players are not incompetent, only inattentive. If I repeat this enough I'll believe it, right?

Team Hero is: Psychic warrior (deep impact and hostile empathic focus), gnome Sorcerer (summons, combust, lesser acid orb, incompetent outside of a fight), Cleric (AC whore, secondary healing focus), Warblade/Fighter (single weapon jumping tiger claw and a lizard taming/riding fetish), Rogue (generic-ish skill monkey type).

So they walked out of Almaria and went to solve a "lizard problem." The cleric actually talked to some farmers on the road! That just meant that they knew which farm to stop at. I was wondering if they'd manage to get lost on a road through farmland. But they got to the O'Malley farm without incident and send the rogue in alone to talk to the farmer. She did something quire useful without realising it, she mentioned that they were adventurers. The farmer had been expecting city guard goons and had initially just directed them to his south field. Once he knew they were adventurers he actually invited them in, spoke politely, and told them that they were facing basilisks. They began planning!!!

Enacting the plan most of them climbed to the roof of the farmhouse and readied missile weapons. The warblade and cleric went and staked out three smallish "eating lizards" near the east, south, and west fields. The fields are tower-cap mushrooms, grown for their wood, about 200' on a side and 150' from the farmhouse. The tower-caps grow pretty close together and can get decently big, so I put down slightly offset rows of pennies (sometimes we need lots of mooks) one square apart. The nearly ubiquitous glow-shrooms won't grow near tower-caps since they are different types of fungi, so it was dim light on the edges and dark from 15 feet in. As a bonus the cleric cast Light on each stake that the lizards were tied to.

And nothing happened. I let them hang for 20 (game time) minutes, since that was what I'd rolled for the first basilisk to wander over towards a new food. Seriously, real life hunters would love for bait to work that fast and these guys were starting to get itchy pants after five minutes. The psi-war and cleric rushed the first basilisk that came out of the south field, bloodied it, followed it as it fled and failed saves in amongst the tower-caps. That one fled with one hit point and the mephit (sorcerer's familiar) finished it with a crossbow bolt from 100' up in the air. This was the sorcerer's big contribution to the encounter, he never got off the roof and didn't cast any spells because he only had close and touch range spells. The warblade went haring off to the west field and fought the second basilisk alone (the rogue was dragging two statues back to the farmhouse by now), wounded it and then managed to scare it with the Tome of Lightning followed by knocking it out with a non-proficient unarmed attack of opportunity. There followed some amusing antics where he tried to blindfold it, healed it with a Healing Belt, failed a handle animal check and had to knock it out again, re-blindfold, try again, fail again, make more saving throws... It was quite amusing until the rogue came over and plunked a couple arrows into it while it was unconscious. The warblade was a good sport about it too, he just went to the nest and kept one of the hatchlings alive while he killed the other two.

Cue a slow trip to the Tower of Magi. The warblade rented an outbuilding from the O'Malley's to begin to rear his new pet, he's named it Sulfras. The other borrowed the O'Malley's wagon and hauled the statues back to Almaria where they hung out in a tavern for four days until a caravan came through. Ten days later (caravans are slow when you have to use barely tamed giant lizards to pull wagons) at the Tower one of the three 9th level cleric NPCs in the whole game agreed to un-stone people because nothing exciting was happening that week. The gnome wanted to learn to speak giant, one of the wizards agreed if he's fetch a magic book he'd had shipped to him from the ogres who raided that caravan. This is the same dungeon/quest they were offered last time they came to the Tower. A Sending spell was used to summon the warblade, his young basilisk being just trained enough to not claw it's blindfold off in public. Five days later the warblade appeared and sold the Flame Halberd for 28,000 which initiated a small buying spree. The cleric finally sacrificed the Vicious Explosive Orc Bane Dire Flail to his god for a few more piety. The next useless item on the list is a small Slow Burst (MiC 43) Disarming Dragon Bane siangham. The psychic warrior duelled the high priest, for a good reason though. The high priest is an ex-adventurer who worships Okawaru and has a blessed weapon. The psi-war wants to go into the Okawaru prestige class and needs a blessed weapon. Okawaru wants his blessed weapons to be out in the world smooshing people. The psi-war originally wanted a great mace and the only person at the Tower of Magi who had one was the priest, but he'll "make do" with a light mace that's a +4 weapon for four rounds up to three times a day. It was a nice non-lethal duel that the psi-war almost lost before he won in the end.

Then they went back to Almaria (ogres? what ogres?).

So three weeks after his first meeting with the mayor the cleric walks back into the mayor's office and asks for a pass to the Castle because he "solved the lizard problem." The mayor responded that some of his guards had come in two weeks ago with a pair of dead basilisks that "they had killed" and anyway he hadn't promised a pass to the Castle, just a reward. The cleric was then insulted again and thrown out of the building. Our heroes got quite pissy. But they remembered a rumour about the local Army commander not liking corruption! And they went and talked to him! It's the Almaria Bloodbath quest! It's detailed in a spoiler back just before this became a ongoing game thread, one of the last things I finished just before the game started.

It is August 12th and the rogue (and everyone else, but mostly the rogue) is considering how to get in touch with the "Thieves Guild," which has been defunct and crushed by the tong for several years now. Plus I need to figure out what the promised reward is. In the original it was a nice stealth boosting ring, I'm not sure what it should be for these guys.